World of Goblin Slayer: The Stranger
by FLuXX-PwR
Summary: A newcomer to the DnD-esque world of Goblin Slayer attempts to find his place. He becomes an adventurer and teams up with some new and some familiar faces. However, his history and nature can raise some eyebrows and may jeopardize his enrollment in the Adventurer's Guild. A necessary evil may have just been placed on their doorstep...
1. CH1: A New Arrival

CH1: A New Arrival

A brown haired man trekked through a forest, carefully placing his footing as he descended down a hill into a clearing. He stood firmly up and stretched and took a deep breath. The crisp air of the evergreen woods and the silence only broken by the clinking of his armored arm. He looked around, and let out a sigh.

"Hopefully they haven't followed me this far through the mountains…" he said to himself. The stranger set off again to the east where the clearing looked as though it would run into a road. After a short time, amidst the rustling of trees in the wind and chirping of birds, there was a loud bustling in the bushes and heavy, beastly breathing. He looked around, then caught sight of what was making the noise. Crashing through the brush came a very large bear, charging while frothing at the mouth. It quickly got closer and swatted at the stranger. He effortlessly dodged to the side as the bear came careening to a stop. He drew his executioner greatsword from its scabbard on his back and looked the bear over. It was bleeding from multiple places and had at least two broken arrows lodged its side. It turned to face him and started to advance again, stumbling.

"Rabid, and wounded. I'll put you out of your misery." He said. From the same direction the bear came in, he heard the shout of a young man.

"It came through here! Don't let it get away!" it said. The stranger looked in the direction of the voice, then heard the whistle of an arrow cutting through the air; it came flying directly at him. Using his armored arm, he deflected the arrow with a look of irritation. It was obviously meant for the bear, but haplessly fired nonetheless. The bear lunged at the stranger, attempting to bite him. He sidestepped the attack, and using his momentum, stepped into a spinning downward hack directly into the bear's neck. There was a loud crack, and the bear dropped to the ground and remained motionless. The blade wasn't far enough to cleanly decapitate the beast, but well enough to snap the neck. He removed the blade from the bear's hide and said,

"Have your rest." Behind the stranger there was the sound of several pairs of footsteps coming through the brush. He looked over his shoulder to find a party of four young men and women, the boys wielding a sword and axe, the girls with a spear and bow. They looked relatively green, most of them only having a minor amount of leather armor and fewer pieces of metal plating. The boy with the sword pointed at the stranger and announced,

"Hey! You stole my kill!" The stranger swung his sword down to shake off the excess blood, and started to sheathe it on his back. Annoyed, he replied,

"What was I supposed to do? Let the bear kill me? It was suffering anyway." He turned his attention to the girl with the bow. "And you. You nearly shot me instead." Embarrassed, the girl said,

"S-Sorry. We didn't know you were here." The stranger rolled his eyes.

"Don't simply loose arrows if you can't see your target. You're not at war." There fell an awkward silence across the party. Then the boy with the axe spoke.

"Well, what do we do now? We didn't get the kill, and he's not part of the quest." He said. The stranger developed a confused expression.

"Quest? You mean someone actually sent you here to find this beast?" he asked.

"Yeah," the spear girl started, "We came here from the Adventurer's Guild. This is the last mission we needed to do to try and advance to Steel rank." The stranger said nothing and simply looked down at the bear for a few moments, then he looked back at the Adventurer's.

"I've no need for stealing from greenhorns. Do with it what you will. All I ask is that you point me towards this guild you mentioned." The boy with the axe pointed him in the direction they'd come charging in from and told him the path to take from there. The stranger waved and set off on his own towards the guild. After a while of walking, he found some semblance of civilization. He passed a run-down shack, which didn't look as though anyone was living there. Then there were fields, some agricultural, some with livestock, mostly cows. There walked a maroon-haired girl amongst them, stopping at each one for reasons unknown and disinteresting to the stranger.

He kept walking and the face of a large town came into view across a river. Crossing the bridge and entering its perimeter, he noticed it was bustling with life. Merchants, farmers, adventurers, and the like as far as he could see.

"Now to find the guild…" The stranger thought. He looked around for someone who might know where his destination was. He approached a pair of adventures, one amale knight with a goatee, the other a female lancer, both decked out in flashy, albeit impractical looking armor. They were speaking to each other when he came close then they paused.

"Excuse me," he said politely. They both started to turn to him. "Do you two know the way-" he started.

"Ugh!" they said in unison with disgusted looks. They quickly turned and walked away, leaving the stranger alone, confused and irritated.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance!" He said loudly at the two of them, arms held out to his sides. He dropped them, rolled his eyes, and shook his head. "I may not look the most fresh but it doesn't warrant that kind of disrespect." He said to himself. He looked around again, this time for some newer flesh. He spotted a team of three who couldn't have been more than 16 at the oldest.

"Excuse me," he said as he came upon them. Their chatting stopped as they each looked at this new stranger. Their eyes grew wide and the color fled their faces as they saw him. The stranger met each of their eyes with a puzzled expression. He cleared his throat and asked,

"Could you possibly direct me to the Adventurer's Guild?" One of the boys pointed down one of the roads and said, shakily,

"Y-Y-Yeah. It- It's that way, and take a left at the fountain. It's a four story building, y-you can't miss it…" The stranger looked down the road, then back at the three,

"Thank you." He said. He stepped away and followed the directions he was given. He could hear the teenagers let out a sigh of relief. "What is it about me that I'm suddenly so unlikeable? I may be scar riddled but I'm not simply the intimidating prescence." He thought. After turning at the fountain, the building meeting the description of the Adventurer's Guild came into view. There were tons of armored and robed individuals congregating around it, entering and exiting through its front door. The stranger did the same. On his path, he noticed a few supposedly more experienced individuals with confused expressions as they looked at him. He disregarded them and entered the building.

Inside the guild, it seemed like a warm and inviting place. There were people chatting about, sharing stories of past successes and battle tactics over drinks in the tavern. Some people were showing off new armor and weapons while others admired their new battle scars. The stranger looked around some more. Bookshelves were filled with texts of history, monster encyclopedias, and nearly every battle strategy guide one could hope for.

A few more moments of perusing led the stranger to the bounty board. There were listings for monsters drawing too close to livestock, daughter's being abducted, bandits, the lot. As he looked them over, he noticed something. Left and right, there seemed to be no shortage of bounties for goblins. The rewards seemed relatively low for the amount of work, causing the stranger to believe they were quite unpopular.

"Someone let the jackrabbits mate. I however am not the person to call…" he thought. Also neglecting the goblin quests, he pulled down a sheet for a chimera that had made its den along a trade route, effectively cutting off the path entirely. The chimera was substantially more dangerous than most of the other quests still available, but his experience would prove more than enough.

Someone else took down a sheet next to the stranger, close enough proximity to get his attention. The girl turned and walked towards the back of the room; the stranger watched, intrigued. The girl brought the page to a reception desk and handed it to another girl standing behind one of the segments. The stranger approached another length of the reception desk, paper in hand.

"Next please." Said the girl behind the desk with a sweetly smile. She was a blonde with strangely captivating golden eyes and fair skin. The stranger stepped forward and handed her the quest paper.

"I'd like to take this quest please." He said. The girl looked it over and said,

"This chimera has been a thorn in a lot of sides lately. I'm glad someone is willing to try and take it out." She looked back up from the page at the stranger, first cheerily, then troubled.

"Is something wrong?" he asked. She seemed to be intently focused on his collar region.

"Ummm, sorry, but, what rank are you?" she asked, somewhat embarrassed.

"Rank?" he said, confused.

"I don't think I've ever seen you in here before. Are you registered in another branch of the Guild?"

"No. I only learned of the guild today."

"Okay, umm, sorry, but, I can't let you accept this quest unless you're at least Ruby ranked." She said, red in the face. The stranger said nothing and simply opened his shoulder bag. He reached in and produced a very large piece of vertebrae and placed it on the counter. The girl looked at it, dumbfounded.

"This is the vertebra shackle of an ancient dragon. There is only one in its body and there is no way to remove it without killing the beast." He said. "Trust me when I say this is paltry compared to what I'm capable of doing." The girl blushed and looked back up at him, scratching the back of her head. She smiled and said,

"Aha… That is quite… impressive, but I still can't let you go. I don't doubt you can defeat the monster on your own, but it's just policy. If the board finds out that I let an unranked take a quest like this and for some reason they don't come back, that could be my job on the line." The stranger chuckled.

"Alright, fair enough. How does one become ranked then?" he asked. The girl slid him another piece of paper, a quill-pen, and a vial of ink.

"I just need you to fill out this form please." She said. He took the items and started writing. There came a set of heavier, more distinct footsteps from behind the stranger. They stopped next to him, and he looked over to his right. There, with an elbow leaning on the counter, stood an orange haired man in shining, high quality blue armor with a spear in the other hand. Disregarding the stranger, the spearman was focused on the receptionist girl. The stranger picked up on what was going on quickly and merely rolled his eyes and continues writing.

"Hey, I finished my quest. Did you miss me?" the spearman said. The receptionist girl giggled and said,

"Welcome back! Glad to see you're still in one piece. Was it too much trouble?" she asked.

"Naaaaaah. Maybe a scratch here and there, but nothing I couldn't handle." The spearman said with a smirk. He looked down at the stranger's registration in front of him. "What's this? You new in town?" he asked.

"Yes." The stranger responded in monotone, not stopping to even look in the spearman's direction. The spearman turned his back to the counter and leaned on both his elbows this time. Trying and failing to look humble, he said,

"You know, I like rookies. If I see you around, I can give you some tips. Maybe I'll take you under my wing on a couple quests." The stranger slowly looked at the spearman, and slowly leaning in, visibly annoyed, he said sarcastically.

"Yes, I will certainly, keep that in mind." He looked back at the girl and handed her the registration form. She looked it over, then back at the stranger.

"Well, it's filled out correctly. But, why did you leave your age blank?" she asked.

"It's complicated. Simply put, I just don't remember." He answered. The receptionist looked lost for words. She shook her head and looked back down at the paper.

"I suppose we can overlook that, it's not vitally important…. Everything looks to be in order." The girl reached under the counter and produced a white colored tag on a necklace. She offered it to the stranger, who accepted it and looked it over.

"What is this?" he asked.

"It's a Guild rank tag. It helps identify you should something happen to you for whatever reason. That one is porcelain, meaning you're the lowest rank… for now anyway." The receptionist said with a smile.

"Can you give me a brief description of the ranks?" he asked.

"There are ten ranks of adventurers, with porcelain being the lowest and platinum the highest. After achieving enough in a given rank, you can take a board to try and advance to the next rank. With each advancement, you can start taking on bigger and more dangerous quests. However, everyone has to start somewhere." The receptionist recited in one breath. The stranger looked the tag over. The words "Adventurer's Guild" were carved into one side. He put it into his pocket and looked back at the receptionist.

"If that's how it is, so it shall be." He said. "I guess I'll just start with something simpler." The receptionist shook her head, red faced.

"Uhhh-umm We can't let you do that yet! You'll need to wait until tomorrow. Y'know, registration processing and filing takes time." She said, suddenly more nervous. The stranger gave her a suspicious look. He was silent for a time, and then said,

"That seems off, but I've never been one to push papers, so I really can't dispute it. Very well... Is there any non-combative work I can do?"

"Yes, there's another bulletin next to the quest board." The receptionist said with a smile as she motioned. The stranger looked in its direction and was about to step off, but stopped himself. He looked back at the girl and asked,

"Before I go, what is the currency used here?"

"Gold, silver, copper, the usual. Why?"

"I have been many places, and you would not believe some of the things people use for money. One of them literally used souls as medium of trade." He shrugged his shoulder and approached the board, selected a worker request for building fences, and returned to the desk. The receptionist confirmed him and sent him on his way. He stopped just before the door and looked back over his shoulder.

"Feel free to keep the dragon bone for a souvenir. I've been meaning to free up some space." He said.

"Have a nice day!" the receptionist said as she waved. As soon as the stranger exited the front door of the guild, she slumped down in her chair and hung her head. The other receptionist girl sitting next to her and looked at her and said,

"You straight up lied to that guy about waiting. You aren't falling for him are you?" the blonde girl sat up.

"No, it's not that. I feel like we've just had some kind of prodigy come to the guild, and we can't afford to lose him. If monster armies keep showing up, we're going to need people like him. It would be a waste to keep him at such a low rank." She said. The brown haired girl grew confused.

"So what are you saying?"

"I want to talk to the administration to see if there's anything we can do to advance him faster. Surely someone who can take down a dragon on their own can make up for several high ranking adventurers. They're not all going to live forever." The brown haired girl roller her eyes and shook her head.

"You know what? You do you."


	2. CH2 Humble Beginnings

The stranger came to the site of the work order. It was an elderly farming couple whose wheat field fence was decrepit and falling apart. He knocked on the door of their house and they answered. The stranger presented the work order and explained why he was there. They showed him to his supplies, he removed his armor and sword, and he set to work. After several hours, he'd erected all new fencing around the field. He stabbed the shovel into the dirt upright, and stepped back and wiped the sweat from his head. As he caught his breath, he looked to the main road. There walking alone, he saw someone. On closer inspection, he was wearing mostly black leather, multiple pieces of grimy steel plating, and a helm with a ragged plume to suit. The figure carried no emotion in his step. The stranger thought nothing of it, and went to report his finishing to the elder farmers. They paid him handsomely due to his swiftness and quality of work.

The stranger reclaimed his equipment as the sun began to fall. He looked off into the flaming horizon and breathed deeply. His first piece of work, and it didn't even involve killing. The stranger donned his sword across his back and headed back to town, thinking of what he was going to do for dinner, now that he actually had money for it. The sun touched down in the west when the stranger had made it back to town, meaning there was still plenty of life about. He entered the guild and was greeted with waves of energy. There were several parties in the bar section, cheering and rejoicing, likely from successful quests.

Amongst the tables, there were several barmaids delivering food and taking orders. The stranger sat alone at an empty table. He slip his scabbard and blade from his back and propped them up against the table. After a short moment, someone approached his table. There came someone's hand placed on the table.

"Hi. Can I get you anything?" said the voice attached to the hand. The stranger only glimpsed at the hand, confused. It resembled more of a paw than a hand. He looked up to see a bright eyed girl with ears like a wolf and a friendly smile, who must have been a barmaid. He cleared his throat and said,

"I'll keep it simple. I'll have a steak and baked potato, and the strongest drink you have."

"Coming right up!" she said cheerily, "Any specific way you want the steak?"

"Surprise me." The stranger said. He rested his elbows on the table and rubbed his temples. "So this is it. A start to a new life, from the bottom again." He said to himself. "Maybe being cursed won't be so bad if I can find some enjoyment out here…" The stranger sat in silence with his thoughts for several minutes. Then, among the sound of many stamping feet and adventurers carrying on, he could pick out the sound of a specific footstep. There was a click to it, implying the owner wears heels. Then, he felt as though, eerily, it was growing closer. He sat up and turned to face his curiosity. There already quite close was a voluptuous woman with pale purple hair in a spellcaster's dress and a twisted witch hat. They locked eyes as she grew closer, slowly; him rather defensive and confused, and her almost bubbly and misty-eyed. She walked to the side of him.

"You're quite the… interesting… one." She said as she walked.

"Okay, I'll bite. What do you know of me?" he said, now more curious than anything else.

"You look… haunted…. Yet you seem to quell it behind…. battle…" she said as she sat down next to him backwards on the bench and crossed her legs.

"I get around. You can't expect all my attention to come of noble intent." He said as he looked back down at the table. From the corner of his eye, he saw the witch produce a slim tobacco pipe from her cleavage. She spoke a word of spell and the horn ignited as though someone struck a match. She took a long drag, then blew her smoke upward. The stranger looked back at her and said

"I've seen an astronomical number of things, disturbing or majestic, but never that." The witch snickered and said with a smile,

"I… know plenty of… tricks." The stranger sat in silence for a moment and simply locked eyes, trying to figure her out.

"Alright," he started, "What's your game? We've not met for all but five minutes and you speak like we're friends. Do you treat all the newcomers like this?" The witch took another drag.

"What…? I'd like to keep my interests… informed… rather than… skulking." She said. Still a bit confused, the stranger said,

"I suppose it's better to have a fan than a stalker."

"Best be… careful. Fans can… turn into… stalkers…" she said before puffing on her pipe. She breathed out and looked back at the stranger with a mysterious smile. "You know… you remind me.. of… him." She said. "Analytical… Not much for… words… Almost a… mystery." The stranger raised an eyebrow.

"I'm going to need a bit more than 'him' I don't even know who he is." He said.

"Goblin… Slayer…" the witch said. The stranger said nothing and merely bore the look of pure obliviousness. There was a silence between the two as the witch replaced the pipe back between her cleavage. She stood up and looked down at him.

"Do keep in… touch." She said. She walked away and rejoined another group in the tavern. The stranger shook his head, trying to wrap his head around what he'd just been told.

"I still have no idea what she's on about." He muttered to himself. At this time, the barmaid had brought his food and placed it before him. He paid his bill and tipped the maid appropriately, ate his meal, then exited the guild.

The sun was setting, and the stranger began to think about where he was going to rest for the night. He'd been paid plenty for fixing a fence, but it was likely not enough for a room at any inn. He let out a sigh, but then was struck with an idea. The abandoned shack was relatively close to town. It may be run down, but it was still four walls and a roof.

The stranger exited town and began to trek towards the shack. The sun had gone down fully and night had set in when he finally made it. He knocked on what was left of the door just to make sure it was truly abandoned. There was no response.

"I guess this is home." He said to himself. Looking at what he could with the moonlight through the window. There was a broken bed, a rough table, and a ragged pelt rug. The rest was invisible to his eyes at the time. "Better than nothing." He thought. He unslung his sword in scabbard from his bag and propped it against the wall. He removed his armor from his arm, elbows and knees, as well as his sword gauntlet, coat, and chainmail, leaving only his maroon shirt, pants, and steel-toed boots. He picked up the pelt rug, dusted it off, then laid down on the bed, using it as a makeshift blanket.

The stranger tossed and turned in his sleep, tormented by nightmares. He died over, and over, and over by all means; stabbing, cutting, poison, falling, bludgeoning, the lot. He was pursued relentlessly by a faceless terror of his past. Then his dream went silent. Exhausted, he collapsed to his knees, hoping it might be over finally. When he tried to stand, he couldn't. He struggled and pushed himself up, but to no avail. It was as if he was shackled to the ground. He looked down at his and, or at least attempted to. He could not.

Out of nowhere, he was kneeled over a chopping block, about to be executed. He turned his head to the side, to see a shadowy figure wielding his own greatsword. The figure brought the blade down with great speed. The stranger screamed, his eyes blew open, and he rapidly sat bolt upright in his bed. He breathed heavily as cold sweat ran down his face. His heart was beating hard enough it was almost trying to escape from his chest. The stranger slowed his breathing in an attempt to calm himself. His heartbeat slowed, and he held his face and rubbed his eyes.

"A thousand years and it never gets any easier." He said under his breath. He heard a loud crack of wood outside. He looked out the window and saw nothing. He quietly stepped out of bed and unsheathed his sword. He stepped outside and peered around the corner of the shack in the direction of the noise. It was just before dawn, where the horizon was bright but the land remained in shadow. Through the trees, he saw a fence. He let out a sigh of relief and moved in to investigate.

Upon closer inspection, there was simply a snapped board across the lateral part. The stranger looked to the dirt around him for potential footprints of a culprit. There were none. He looked closer at the boards in the fence. There were wear marks on the board as well as fresh tufts of hair lodged in the grain and on the ground.

"Cows. Crack must have spooked them… Or my rude awakening." He said to himself. The stranger stood up and walked back into the shack. He dismantled the table and carefully pulled the still-useable nails from it as well as two of the boards comprising the top surface. He approached the fence and held the two cracked sides of the fence together between the loose boards like a splint. He hammered the nails in with the pommel of his sword. As he was just finishing putting in the last nail, the stranger heard footsteps in the gravel, coming closer. He looked up from his repair job to see a rather grimy looking warrior, the same one from the day before. He simply stood there, eerily still. Then he spoke.

"What are you doing?" he asked. The stranger stood up after the nail was flush and said,

"I fixed the fence." The figure remained silent. It was difficult for the stranger to read him.

"Did you see any footprints in the dirt? Deformed, roughly the size of a child's?" the figure asked.

"No. Why?" the stranger replied, puzzled.

"Goblin scouts." The figure said bluntly. The stranger plucked a tuft of brown hair from the wood grain and held it up.

"Then really no. A cow was rubbing on the fence to scratch itself and it broke. Fairly common occurrence." He said.

"I see." The figure said. He went back to perusing the fence line without any kind of end to the conversation. The stranger placed his sword back into it's scabbard and looked off into the horizon. The sun was barely peeking over the mountains. He looked back at the grimy warrior and said,

"What are you doing up so early anyway?" Unwavering in his task, the warrior said,

"I look for signs of goblins at dawn every day." An awkward silence fell again. The stranger looked around, then he chimed in again,

"You're not even concerned why I'm out her so early, let alone fixing fences?"

"No. Should I be?" the warrior asked. The stranger paused before saying,

"No . I don't suppose you have much reason to." He turned away and returned to the shack without a word. He put on his armor, sheathed his greatsword on his back, and exited the building. He passed the warrior again and said,

"Alright, I suppose I'll see you at the guild some time. Goodbye." To which the warrior responded simply,

"Yeah."

The stranger entered the guild at daybreak, and there were already plenty of adventurers eager to hunt and hone their skills. The blonde receptionist girl emerged from behind the desk with a stack of papers and walked towards the bulletin board. She hung them all in every available spot and then some. She turned to the anxiously waiting crowd and announced,

"Good morning everyone! Today's quests are officially open!" She quickly darted out of the way as the wall of bodies descended upon the quest board. The receptionist returned back to the desk to start handling quest takers. The stranger attempted to approach the board, bit was cut off by countless adventurers, veterans and newbies alike, swarming to get their tasks. Being an adult about it, the stranger waited until enough people had subsided and he could see the board for himself.

Once the stranger could get a look at the board, it was only a skeleton of what it had been mere minutes ago. Looking over the remaining quests, they consisted of the likes of goblins, giant rats, bugs, and other undesirables. The newer adventurers aside the stranger tried to avoid the goblin quests. He wasn't interested in the other quests, as they were rather boring to him. He took one of the goblin slaying quests in hand and looked it over.

"How ironic…" He thought. The quest details were from a farmer to the north, whose townspeople and livestock we're being terrorized by a nearby den, resulting in a few abductions as well. He brought the page to the blonde receptionist and she looked it over.

"Goblins huh? Not too many people take these. Well, except for Goblin Slayer of course." As the words left her lips, the image of the grimy warrior the stranger had seen earlier that morning flashed across his mind.

"It seemed more interesting than the others." He said. The receptionist took the page down to the desk and started writing something disinteresting to the stranger. The receptionist looked up at him and said with a smile,

"You're all set. Happy hunting!" The stranger started to turn away, but then the receptionist chimed in, "Oh, and... Do be careful please." He looked back at her, her hands clasped over her chest. He chuckled.

"Heh. You don't need to worry about me. Farewell." He said as he turned away. Rather than leaving, he made for a bookshelf in the communal area of the guild. He looked over the books until he found an encyclopedia of monsters. Flipping through the pages, the stranger stopped on the section of goblins. Skimming through it, he found his basic necessary information.

"Intelligence of children, but children can be devious little bastards." He mumbled. After a couple more minutes of reading, he closed the book and put it back in its place on the shelf. He made for the door, and there came pushing through it, was Goblin Slayer. To no surprise, he paid the stranger no attention. He watched the proclaimed slayer of goblins walk up to the receptionist girl as he caught the door to exit. As soon as he stepped through, he turned his head at the last second to run into a young girl.

"Oof!" she said with a chirp as she stumbled back and fell onto her butt. "Sorry!" she said as a follow up. Rather embarrassed, the stranger said,

"No, my apologies. I should have been watching where I was going." He got a good look at her. She was a young blonde girl with big blue eyes and pure white clothes, a tell tale sign of a priestess or the like. He offered her a hand, and she accepted. He pulled her to her feet and kicked up one end of her staff with his foot and caught it upright with his hand. He offered it to her with a luke-warm half smile.

"I believe this is yours." He said. She took the staff and said,

"Ah, yes. Thank you!" She turned and entered the guild. Before the door closed, the stranger saw her approach and engage in conversation with Goblin Slayer.

"Odd couple, but who am I to judge." The stranger said to himself. He left the guild and made for an armory. After finding one, he started to look over its handy selection of weapons and armor. He scratched his stubbled chin as he went from sword to spear.

"They're all too long for a cave." He thought. Then he spotted a mace on a rack on the wall. He took it by the handle and felt its heft. Its blunt bladed head made it very top heavy, as it should be. It was short enough for cave use, but long enough for good momentum. He took that as his choice, along with a bottle of lantern oil. He took them to the counter to pay. There was a short, almost dwarven looking man with a large beard behind it working a blade on a grindstone. When he heard the clunk of the mace hitting the countertop, he looked up to see the stranger, then he looked him over with his better eye.

"Ye look a bit too chistled to be using somethin' so crude." He said in a condescending tone.

"It serves me better in a cave than a greatsword." The stranger retorted.

"Speakin' er which, that un' ye got there don't look like it's seen a grinder since it was made." The smith said.

"It's an executioner's sword. It's meant to be blunt." Said the stranger in monotone.

"Suit yerself." The Smith said as he went back to grinding. "Just gimme what ye think is fair fer the mace there. I been tryin' to get rid of the damn thing fer months now."

"So be it." The stranger said as he left the aformentioned amount of gold in payment. He placed the bottle of lantern oil in his side bag and left the armory. Finally on his hike to his first quest, her took a breath and looked at the road ahead.

"I guess today, I become the Goblin Slayer."


	3. CH3 The First Drop

The stranger arrived in the town to the north of the guild and navigated his way to the farm that had posted his quest. He knocked on the door and the owner answered in his overalls and straw hat. The stranger asked him for suspected direction and any other useful information. The farmer pointed the stranger to the west and said the goblins had also abducted his 14 year old daughter. With that in his mind, the stranger set off to the west. He trekked through the woods until he reached a mountainside clearing. Upon closer inspection, the stranger noticed there was a cave in the mountainside. He picked up a dry branch from the ground and approached the mouth of the cave. Closer still, he noticed a crudely made totem consisting of a spine and skull of a creature he didn't recognize, and a blood red cloth hanging down. Thinking nothing of it, he pulled the cloth from the totem, wrapped it around the stick, doused it in oil, and set it ablaze, making a torch. Before putting the oil back into his back, he poured a handy amount on the head of his mace, should he need to ditch the Torch he wouldn't be without light.

The stranger entered the cave and was swallowed by it's darkness. There was nothing inside save for the boulders and occasional skull. That was, until he came across another totem. There was nothing uniform about it like the first one. It was like it was made of whatever bones the goblins left laying about. Confused, the stranger scratched his head and looked around. Finding no explanation, he carried on deeper into the cave. After a while, something seemed off to him. Amongst the sounds of the crackle of the torch, and the dripping of condensation, he could have sworn he heard steps. He stopped walking and looked around. The sound stopped. He looked back the direction he'd come, and there was the same nothing that there was on his way in. Cautiously, he kept moving.

As he got farther in, he started hearing the pitter-patter of footsteps again, only this time, loud enough to deny any suspicion. They came from behind him this time. The stranger turned around and readied his mace. There he saw five goblins emerging from the walls and charging him. Saying nothing, he engaged them. With lightning speed, he swung his mace in an upward manner, meeting one of their skulls and effectively shattering it on impact. Using his swing momentum, he turned in a circle, still moving forward and delivering an upward kick with his right foot. His steel toe collided with another goblin's chin, sending it up into its brain. Another goblin lunged at him with a crooked dagger. He sidestepped the attack and brought the mace down in an overhead slam. It hit directly on the goblin's head, crumpling it like a shoddy helm.

The other two goblins, realizing they stood no chance, turned and started to scamper off towards the entrance of the cave. The stranger chased after them. Once he got close enough to attack, he swung his mace. At the last second, the goblins seemed to just disappear into the wall. The mace met the ground with a loud *CLANG*. Bewildered, the stranger brought his torch closer to the cave wall. He found a small tunnel burrowing its way into the rock.

"Clever little bastards." The stranger said, "They must be going to warn the others." He rolled a large rock into the entrance of the crevice and blocked it completely. He continued farther into the dank cave, blocking off any side tunnels he could find along the way. The stranger stopped when he came to a fork in the cave, neither of which did he have any idea what they would lead to. "Either of these could be another death…" he mumbled. He rummaged around in his bag and found some string. He cut a section and tied each end to some rocks in a pile, low enough they would still trip goblins and make enough noise to alert him.

The stranger took the left path cautious of what lay ahead. There was nothing at first, but then he spotted something on the cave floor. On closer inspection, it was some cloth. Obviously human made, it resembled tattered clothing. The stranger picked it up and held it in the light. The floral design indicated it was a piece of a dress. Remembering the farmer's missing daughter, he assumed it belonged to her. He tossed the cloth aside and turned around.

"That's bait. I'm walking into a trap." He took a step forward, then stopped. Into the darkness, he heard his string line trip and some rocks falling, followed by footsteps. They didn't stop from the string. They were much heavier, indicative that this was not a goblin he was dealing with. He readied his mace as the steps grew nearer. A foot came into the light, with the same filthy green skin as the goblins. It moved closer, fully revealing itself. It was indeed a goblin, only much, much larger, and more muscular. Several more goblins skittered into the light behind the large one. The stranger dropped his still burning torch on the ground and reached into his bag. He pulled out the jar of lantern oil and popped the cork.

In a swift motion, he slung the contents of the jar at the goblins, getting a good douse on the seven of them. They staggered slightly, some having gotten it in their eyes. One of the small goblins lunged at the stranger. He brought the head of the mace down to the torch, igniting its oil coating and swinging it at the goblin. It collided with the goblin's head, setting it ablaze and careening towards it's brethren. The rest of the goblins caught fire as the first smacked into them. The dull roar turned into a series of screeches from all of the goblins. They howled in pain and tried to put the flames out. The stranger advanced and clubbed each of them to death, leaving only the large goblin. It seemed more irritated by the fire than afraid, but was still intently focused on trying not to be immolated. However, it would do the goblin no good. It looked back at the stranger, only for him to deliver a full force kick into its knee, bending it at a 90 in the wrong direction. The goblin shrieked with pain as the stranger took the mace in both hands and swung down on the cretin's head as hard as he could, crushing it in a single blow.

The stranger picked up his torch from the ground and looked around. Curious, he kept going down the supposedly trapped path. He came to a dead end. There were several bodies littering the cave floor. Some clothes, some armored, reminiscent of former adventurers; though all were now skeletal. However, there remained one female body against the wall that seemed like it could be alive. It was fully clothed, though torn. The body mass seemed right, and it still had hair.

"Hey." The stranger called out. There was no response. He stepped closer, careful to not disturb the other bodies in case of traps. He cleared the other cadavers and came close to the target body. "Hello?" he asked. Yet again, no response. He nudged the body with his toe until the body rolled face up. The head came detached from the rest of the body, revealing itself do be nothing more than a few day old soul in a shoddily made wig. The stranger dropped his shoulders and sighed. "Decoy tactics. I'll make note of this." He said to himself.

He exited the space and returned to the fork in the cave, this time taking the starboard path. Cautious as ever, he watched every nook and crevice the light touched. There was little in this path, but then came the stench. The stranger stopped in his path and took a whiff. It reeked of rotten corpses and feces. After nearly hacking up a lung, the stranger trudged on. "Well, no doubt that this side is the den now is there?" he mumbled. He heard skittering before him, and stepped into the presence of two goblins, bearing weapons. They charged him and he, the same. One leapt at him in the air. The stranger swatted him down with the mace as the other goblin attempted to stab him with a dagger. He backstepped out of range and kicked the goblin in the ribs, giving a hearty crack on impact. The mace-impacted goblin hobbled of into the darkness after ricocheting off the wall. The other, immobilized by pain, attempted to crawl away. The stranger approached and stomped its head in and kept walking. With nothing else coming to attack him, the stranger grew suspicious. The cave started to open up, and the stench got worse.

There was a grumbling surrounding the stranger, and he held his torch higher until the whole room was lit up. There were another seven goblins before the stranger, along with several crates and other storage mediums. One of the goblins wore some form of robes and carried a staff, making it look of higher authority, maybe an elder. It shrieked and waved its staff and pointed it to the stranger. A fireball spewed from the end and rocketed toward the stranger. Alarmed, he stumbled out of the way, barely in time to avoid impact. The stranger picked himself off the ground quickly and dusted off. The other goblins began to attack. He looked back at the robed goblin, who seemed pleased with himself.

"Spellcaster. You die first." The stranger said as he kicked a goblin to the side. He used his momentum and spun a circle, then hurled his mace at the goblin mage. Too quick for it to evade, the mace collided with the goblin's head and chest, taking it with it and running into the cave wall. The goblin was dead on impact. The stranger dropped the torch and drew his sword from his back into both hands. With lightning speed, the stranger hacked and hit all the remaining goblins until it fell silent, and all that remained were the echoes carried out of the cave. He swung the blood from his blade and placed it back in the scabbard on his back. Then he picked up the torch from the ground and look around the room. Stolen supplies and dried bones littered the floor.

Then something caught his eye. There aside the mage goblin's corpse was what resembled a chair, made of bone and dried wood. However, it was not as questionable as the inhuman sniveling that can from behind the makeshift throne. The stranger kicked it aside and it fell apart. There was a hollow carved in the wall. Once torchlit, the stranger found a lone goblin child. He dragged it out by it's foot and it did nothing but cry. The stranger drew his sword and held it to the goblin's face. He was about to strike, but then stopped. The tears of the juvenile goblin prodded at something within him. They were the same tears of the child he nearly executed by the king's order for disturbing his carriage horses. Using the pick edge of the blade, he cut an X into the goblin's forehead, and it held its face in pain. He crouched over the goblin and said with menacing intent.

"Hear me and hear me well. I'm not fond of killing children. But if I ever see you again, I will not hesitate to erase you." The goblin child stood up and sprinted off into the darkness. The stranger stood up and returned to searching the room. There came another crying sound from behind a pile of crates, this time it actually was human. The stranger pushed and tossed them aside to reveal a battered girl, naked, bruised, and scarred. "You've certainly see better days." He thought. He approached the girl and crouched aside her. He nudged her shoulder.

"Hey." He said, trying to get her attention. No response. He turned her over onto her back to assess her wounds. "Various lacerations, most fairly fresh. You haven't been here more than two, three days at most." He said. He picked the girl up from under her legs and back and stood up. She groaned, but remained mostly unconscious. The stranger picked his torch back up and set off back to the cave entrance. He winced as he acclimated to natural daylight. It was early evening, the sun had started to go down, and the skies were turning their warm shades of red and orange. It was a fairly peaceful trek back to the town he came from, save for the girl tossing and turning in the stranger's arms. The sun was kissing the horizon when the stranger arrived back at the quest-giver's house. He knocked on the door and waited. The farmer's wife answered, and almost immediately broke into tears when she saw the girl he was holding. The stranger raised an eyebrow and said,

"I take it this one belongs to you." The farmer came to the door to check on the commotion, and was awash with the same feelings as his wife. The stranger returned their daughter and they paid him his reward as well as something extra for finding the girl. He bid them farewell and exited the town. The stranger returned to the guild's town at nightfall. He entered the guild and was met with the same energy as the night before. One again, he sat at an unoccupied table and ordered his dinner. No one bothered him this night, but he did notice some people giving him looks. Some of sympathy, some of disgust, and others with no discernable emotion. Regardless, the stranger thought nothing of them and finished his dinner anyway. He got up and left the guild without saying anything. He left town and made way to his shack outside the farm. He entered through the door, dropped his sword and armor on the floor where the table used to be, and fell on to the bed and was fast asleep.

Mercifully, there were no nightmares to wake the stranger the next morning. Instead, there was the morning sun rising over the mountains and shining perfectly through the window into the stranger's face. It was a rather rude awakening, but certainly better than the alternative. The stranger sat up and stretched. He rubbed his eyes and looked out the window. Along the distant fence of the farm, there was the Goblin Slayer, making his rounds of the property, just as he'd said. The stranger watched him, as he gripped the bedding in his hands. He looked back down at the bed.

"I need some sheets…" he thought. He rolled out of bed and re-equipped his sword and armor and left the cabin. The stranger arrived at the guild and entered it. Once again, there were countless adventurers eager to see what quests the day would bring. The blonde guild girl approached the bulletin board with a large stack of papers. She swiftly hung all the pages and turned and announced the quests for the day were open. The crowd of adventurers descended on the board like a pack of hungry dogs. The stranger stayed back again and waited for the crowd to thin. He came to the board when there was finally an opening, but, as expected, there was little to hunt but goblins.

"So be it." He said with a shrug

This was the case for the next couple of days. The stranger woke in the morning, went to the guild, took a goblin quest, completed it, came back to the guild, ate his dinner, and went back to his dilapidated shack. Eventually, he was actually starting to run low on goblin killing quests. When he'd amassed some amount of money, one day, he decided he wasn't going to kill goblins. Instead, he was going to fix up his makeshift home. The stranger got dressed this morning, but instead abandoned his armor and sword before leaving. He rolled into town and made straight for the marketplace. It was bustling with life and things to do. There were vendors for almost every conceivable amenity and food left and right. The stranger's homeland was also like this, but this one was different. He'd felt like he could actually breathe without getting stabbed in the back.

The stranger started making mental notes of the products he saw and picking out the things he would need. After an hour or two of just perusing, he started trying to tackle the problem of just how he was going to get it all back to his shack. The stranger purchased a large rucksack, some rope, and some belts. He decided he should start with tools and hardware and would just walk this load back home. After acquiring some carpentry and gardening tools, nails, and other miscellaneous hardware, the stranger stuffed them all into his bag, and then tied the tools to the body of it. Then, he picked up the back and put his arms through the straps and felt the weight. It wasn't terrible, but might wear on him. He next made for a store for fabrics and purchased his desired bedding and a decent pillow.

The stranger decided this was enough for one load and headed back home. The path up the farmland fence was uneventful, save for the occasional horse-drawn wagon. The monotony was broken by his arrival back home. The stranger broke from the road and walked in towards his cabin. From nowhere, there came a girl's voice, and he stopped in his tracks.

"Hey! You there!" the voice said. The stranger looked around. Through the opening in the trees, he could see the voice's origin. There was a large chested, red-haired girl in overalls standing behind the fence with a smile. The stranger dropped his bag next to the step at his door and walked towards the girl.

"Hello…" he said with a cautious tone as he broke the treeline.

"Ohhhh. So you're the one who's been living here. I thought it seemed more inhabited lately." She said, bright-eyed.

"Yes… Is that a problem?" the stranger asked.

"Oh no, not at all. No one has lived here in years." She said as she shook her head. "I actually wanted to thank you for fixing the fence. Some of the cows can be pretty troublesome when they get out."

"Ah, that's right. I remember seeing you the other day on my way to the guild, tending to your cows." The cow girl giggled.

"Yep. That's me." She said cheerily. There fell an awkward silence.

"Well, if you don't mind, I must be going. I need to get back to the market before the sun starts to set." The stranger said as he started to turn away.

"Oh hey!" the girl said. The stranger looked back at her. "I have to take a shipment to the guild. Would you mind if I came with?" The stranger paused for a moment, then said,

"I don't see why not." The girl's face lit up.

"Great! I'll go get the wagon ready. Meet me over by that house." She said as she pointed across the field. She jogged off towards said house, leaving the stranger alone. He was filled with a mixture of confusion and something he couldn't quite put his finger on. It felt warm, like the embrace of another.

"Meet a strange man from the woods you've never seen before or know anything about, and first you befriend him…" the stranger muttered, "There are still some things I'll never understand…"

"Perhaps a friend would be a nice thing to have."


	4. CH4 Pushing the Line

The stranger met the cow girl at her house as instructed, where she was finishing loading a hand drawn wagon with a considerable amount of supplies. The stranger scratched his stubbled and scarred chin.

"You want some help with that?" He asked. The girl stepped into the space for pushing the handle and picked it up.

"No thank you. Don't worry, I'm stronger than I look." She said as she started to push the cart with relative ease.

"Point taken." The stranger said with a shrug. They both started the walk up the road to the guild. It was mostly small talk filled, but the stranger somewhat enjoyed it. It was nice to him, just having someone to talk to.

"How exactly did you know I was the one who fixed the fence?" he asked.

"Goblin Slayer said he found you out there on his morning rounds. Said you must be the one living out in that cabin."

"So what's your relation to him?"

"We've been friends since we were children. There was-" the girl started. She choked on her words as though she'd stumbled on a memory she'd rather not have."

"…Have I tread somewhere I shouldn't have?" the stranger asked.

"No, it's fine. It's just… sometimes it's hard to think about. Ahem." The cow girl composed herself again. "When we were kids, one day, I went into the city with my uncle. That same day, our village was overrun by goblins. He was the only survivor. No one ever found him, we all assumed he was dead. I was heartbroken for years. I moved in with my uncle here on the farm, and five years later, I found him, having joined the Adventurer's Guild."

S- "I assume that's why he doesn't talk much."

CG- "Yeah. His mind is pretty much set 100% on killing all the goblins. We're all trying to break him out of his shell, but it's been difficult."

S- "I guess losing everything will do that to a man. I can sympathize."

CG- "What happened to you?"

S- "Parents were poor. Couldn't pay taxes. They were executed and our home, burned down. I was a street urchin with nothing left, so I had to turn to thievery and spying for money… That's all I really want to share for now."

CG- "I suppose that's fair."

Their idle chatter was enough to keep them occupied long enough that they hadn't really noticed when they made it into town. They were about to part ways, then a gruff voice came calling their way.

"Hey, you! Kingslayer!" It said. The stranger and the girl stopped in their tracks. He looked at the voice's origin. There stood two grimy looking barbarians, one with an axe and one with a spear. The stranger rolled his eyes and dropped his shoulders.

"And what do you two want?" The stranger asked condescendingly. The axe barbarian pointed one of his sausage fingers at the stranger and said,

"We're here fer yer head. And that money on it." The spear wielder looked at the cow girl and said with a toothy grin,

"We'll take yer lass there too." The cow girl took a step back, and bore a concerned look. She looked at the stranger and said in a trembling tone,

"You're… You're a wanted criminal?" The stranger looked over his shoulder at her.

"It's more complicated than that. Tell you what, help me carry my supplies back to my cabin, and I'll explain everything. Deal?" he said. The barbarians started closing in on the two of them. The girl looked back and forth between the stranger and the fighters.

"O-okay…" she said.

"Now, let me handle this." The stranger quipped. He looked back at the barbarians just in time for the axe-toter to swing at his head. The stranger leaned back out of the way for the axe head to narrowly miss his nose. He gave an explosive straight punch to the barbarian's ribs and then kicked the back of the knee with his left foot. The oaf fell to the ground and the other charged the stranger, spear in front. The stranger sidestepped it and grabbed the spearhead as it passed. He yanked it towards him and punched the barbarian in the face with his free hand. The jerk of the spear as well as the hit made the barbarian let go of his weapon. The barbarians stumbled back to their feet and readied to attack again.

Spear in hands, the stranger took his ready stance, which looked rather exotic to everyone who was watching the commotion. The barbarians charged the stranger at the same time. He stepped back and changed sides on the spear. Using the blunt side, he lunged forward and jabbed the axe user in the solarplexas, stopping him instantly. The stranger recoiled from the hit and carried his momentum into a spinning sweep. He smashed the spear handle into the head of the other barbarian hard enough that it shattered the handle on impact and sent the barbarian's crude helmet flying. He dropped unconscious on top of his comrade and remained immobile. The stranger looked down at what remained of the spear, then dropped it on the ground in front of him. He turned to the cow girl.

"Well, there's that out of the way." He said. He approached the dumbfounded girl and put his hand on her shoulder, "We should probably leave."

The cow girl and the stranger gathered his supplies, and left town. Once on the road again, the stranger piped up.

"So I owe you an explanation."

"Yeah, kinda." The cow girl said with a confused expression. The stranger took a breath.

"Picking up where I left off earlier. As I grew up, I turned to fighting, and I got good at it. One day the princess was kidnapped by some no-gooders and I saved her. She requested from the king that I get proper schooling. I was fine in my studies, but it just wasn't working for me. I got put into the ranks of the knights, but I wasn't exactly 'knight material.' The king however, did not want to lose someone of my fighting ability. Skip a few years and I was the sword of the king."

"So how does that tie in to those guys attacking us?" the cow girl interjected.

"Yes, I'm getting to that. Anyway. I used to take orders from the king without so much as a question. As the years dragged on, the king got increasingly greedy, and lazy. He'd have you beheaded for so much as tripping over your words when speaking to him. One day, while we escorted his carriage through the city, a child dropped something into the road, and chased after it, startling the horses. It caused the king a minor discomfort for all of four seconds and he ordered me to execute the kid. I raised my sword without hesitation. I was about to strike, but something of the child's tears broke something inside me. Amidst the downfall of tears and cries for his mother, I saw myself. It was the same as when my parents were executed. I told the king I wouldn't stoop so low as murdering children in the street."

The cow girl gasped,

"That's horrible! How could anyone live under a king like that?"

"Given what followed, people sort of stopped living in general. I was stripped of my title and seemed a traitor, as well as imprisoned. The king wanted some entertainment out of my execution, so he made me fight in his arena until my inevitable death. Though death by combat for the best fighter in the continent does not come quickly. They had to call an intermission to remove the bodies from the arena. I was escorted back to my cell, but I broke free and killed every man that stood between me and the king. I went into the armory and took the sword they intended to behead me with to the king's loft. I killed the king before everyone in the arena. After my escape from the city, one of the members of the royal family placed an unspeakable bounty on my head, hence the people that pursue me constantly." The cow girl grew concerned.

"So you're… a wanted criminal?" she said. She started slowing her pace and eventually came to a halt, almost as if preparing to run away. The stranger looked back at her.

"Technically yes. However, that kingdom has long since fallen. The rest are nothing more than brigands chasing ghosts. No one was left to take down the bounties." The cow girl eased up, if only a little, but did not move. "Look, if you don't trust me, that's fine. I don't blame you." He said.

"No, it's not that. It's just… a bit difficult to wrap my head around." The girl was filled with mixed emotions. She started pushing the cart again.

"At any rate, the cabin is just up here." The stranger said with a gesture. The two unloaded the cart of the stranger's supplies, i.e. food, lumber, etc. Once the cart was fully unloaded, the stranger addressed the girl,

"Thank you for your help today. If there's anything you need assistance with, do not hesitate to ask." He said. The cow girl started to collect the wagon and turned to leave.

"Y-yeah… thanks…" she said, skittishly, like she still didn't know how to feel about him. She bid him farewell and sauntered off with the cart. The stranger stood for a moment and let out a sigh.

"I forget the things I've seen aren't exactly normal for most people." He shrugged and entered the cabin and dressed in his worn out battle coat. He strapped his armor on to his arm and everywhere else it went and left for the guild. The sun was starting to set when the stranger left his home, and was almost dark when he arrived at the guild. The inside was just as high energy as all the other times. He made for his usual table, but stopped at an unusual sight. This time, there was someone else occupying one of the seats; It was a girl. She had dark brown neck-length hair, and her dark green armor resembled that of a warrior or knight. It was worn, indicative of a tough battle, but her hands clasped on her head and hidden face told that it was not a winning one. The stranger approached, quietly as not to disturb her.

"Pardon. May I join you at this table?" he asked. The girl didn't raise her head. She sniffed, as though she was crying.

"I guess…" she said. The stranger sat at the other side on the opposite end of the table. The barmaid noticed him, as he was starting to become a regular, and came to take his order. After the barmaid left, the stranger sat patiently. After some time in silence, he looked at the warrior girl.

"You seem like you've had a rough day." He said. She said nothing in return. "Not much of a talker, eh?" The stranger shrugged and went back to waiting. The stranger could see from the corner of his eye, the girl put down her hands and looked at him. She had a scar across her nose and one on her lip, as well as numerous bruises. He looked back, locking eyes with hers; they were an emerald green. Hers were reddened from tears, but she looked rather irritated.

"You don't even know." She said sternly. "I lost my whole party today…" She held her disgruntled look, but the stranger could see she was fighting tears even still. He folded his arms on the table and leaned closer to her.

"Everyone I've ever known is dead. My homeland is gone, and those who remain want me dead. I know your pain, and much, much more." He said coldly. The girl's tears broke through and she held her face again.

"I'm- I'm sorry!" she said as she recoiled. The stranger grimaced.

"Maaaaybe that was too much…" he thought. He sat back up straight. The girl sniffed a couple times.

"S-sorry. It's just… so hard to grasp. They were alive a few hours ago and now they're just… gone." She said with a snivel.

"Death is…" the stranger started. "No, that's really not going to help anything." He muttered. They sat in silence for another few moments. "How did it happen?" he asked.

"I don't know. We- We were hunting a chimera, and… and… I don't know how our plan could go so wrong." She said.

"Plans gone awry. Something wasn't right." The stranger thought. "How many of there were you?" The girl sat up, a bit more composed now.

G- "There were four of us. Two warriors, a mage, and a healer."

S- "At what point did things start to go downhill?"

G- "I don't know. It just happened so fast. The beast got to our healer so quickly after we started fighting, and we tried to help, but it's like we couldn't. Then it just picked us off one by one."

S- "And you were the only one to escape?" The girl's eyes started selling up again.

"They… They told me to leave them. They told me to run." She said, starting to sob again. The stranger scratched his chin in thought. He looked the other way to see the barmaid, who had been awkwardly standing there for a couple minutes holding his food. Embarrassed, the stranger paid the maid and then took a drink of his ale. He looked back at the girl, eyebrow raised.

"You won't take revenge on the monster?" He asked. The girl shook her head.

"I can't. I won't be able to find another party, and I don't have any money. I used the last of my gold buying my gear for that quest." She held her head again. This time, the stranger could hear her stomach rumbling. He looked down at his own plate. He sighed and downed the rest of his ale. He cut the potato in half and picked one of them up. He slid his plate across the table, where it stopped in front of the downtrodden girl. She uncovered her eyes, and her face lit up. She looked at the stranger, who was starting to get up from the table.

"I'll be damned if I let anyone turn out like I did." He said as he stood up. "It was nice talking with you, but I have some things I need to take care of." The girl looked down at the plate again and then back at the stranger and said,

"Thank you so much…" She started devouring the food like she hadn't eaten in days. The stranger made his way through the crowd of adventures and out of the tavern section of the guild. He went to the front desk, where the guild girl sat alone doing paperwork. She heard his footsteps and looked up from what she was doing to see the stranger.

"Oh, hello there." She said. The stranger approached and leaned his elbows on the upper level of the desk.

"I have a matter I need to discuss with you." He said. "I need you to give me the chimera quest." The guild girl shook her head.

"I'm sorry. I can't let you do that, not without the appropriate rank." She said. The stranger leaned in closer.

"How many? How many teams have gone after this beast and not come back?" he asked. The guild girl furrowed her brow and pouted her lips, now really starting to think. "You see that girl over there?" he said. The stranger pointed across the room at the warrior girl he talked to earlier. "She lost her whole party today in a matter of minutes. I know these monsters. They're formidable, but not insurmountable. Especially not as difficult as I'm hearing it to be."

"But, I can't just…" the girl started. She took a deep breath.

"This monster isn't a quest anymore. It's become a nuisance. Eventually you won't have any adventurers left to go after it." The guild girl sat silent for a few moments, unsure of what decision to make.

"If I let you take this quest as a porcelain and something happens to you, I could lose my job." She said. The stranger shook his head.

"That's not going to happen." He said. "I've yet to fail in my goals, and I'm not going to start with this." The guild girl held her troubled expression for a moment before taking another deep breath. She stood up.

"Wait here." She said. She turned around and entered a back room. She returned a minute later holding something in her hand. She placed it on the counter, it was a ruby red guild tag. "Alright. I'll give you the quest. You need to wear this tag when you go. In the event that something does happen to you, hopefully this will prevent anyone from raising too many questions." The stranger picked up the tag and looked at it for a minute, then put it into his coat pocket.

"I'll need the tag back when you're finished." the guild girl said.

"Of course." The stranger said. He started turning to leave. He got three steps, and the guild girl spoke again.

"I'm taking a big risk for you, you know." She said. The stranger stopped and looked at her.

"Trust me. The beast is as good as gone. Good night, now."


	5. CH5 Loose Ends

The stranger woke bright and early the next morning, eager to go and claim his first big kill. He rolled out of bed and got dressed, armor and all. He placed his sheathed greatsword on his back and his bag on his hip, and exited his now slightly less dilapidated home. He got on the road towards town to pick up some final supplies and new weapons for his quest. He started thinking to himself about how to take down the chimera.

"Chimera. I'm expecting at least the size of two ox." Said the voice in his head. "The body is mostly lion, not known for it's hide, but the abundance of muscle might make it hard to reliably cut. I need something sharp but heavy enough to make an impact." The stranger noticed Goblin Slayer along the fences of the farm, making his rounds like he did every morning. The stranger shrugged and kept walking.

"Nothing gets by him does it?" he thought. The stranger rolled over his tactics until he got into town, then he made straight for the armory. He strolled in through the front and the disgruntled owner looked over the counter at him with his bugeyed expression.

"Oh. It's you again." He said, sounding somewhat annoyed. The stranger rolled his eyes and started perusing the various weapons.

"I don't know how you keep this place in business if that's the attitude you have towards everyone." He said.

"Pah!" The owner spat. "What do ye want anyway? You finally want me to look at that sword?"

"No. It's an executioner sword. It's supposed to be blunt." The stranger retorted.

"Oh fer chrissake- If yer not here for smithing, then bother my apprentice instead." The smithy said, annoyed. He went back to his forge, and the stranger, back to shopping. The stranger looked at the racks of battle-axes.

"These definitely have the weight, but I can't get in and out of strikes quick enough." He cast his gaze to the longswords. "Maybe sharp enough, but the leverage won't be enough." He looked at the spears and hammers. "No." Then he looked at a rack with various katanas. After looking them up and down, the stranger said nothing. He only cringed. He was about to start going over all the weapons again to find a compromise, but then he spotted a large falchion. He took it in hand. It was a top-heavier, single edged blade, but had enough of a point to make stabbing still possible. The hilt was long enough to be wielded with two hands.

"Perfect." He said. He brought the sword to the counter, where instead of the dwarf-ish blacksmith, there was a young brown haired man. The stranger placed the falchion on the counter.

"I'll take this blade." He told the boy. The shopkeep picked it up in both hands and looked it over.

"That's a bit… exotic. What are you using it for?" the boy asked, to which the stranger replied,

"Beast hunting. Less hide, more muscle. I needed something to cut more than bludgeon or puncture." The boy looked at the sword, then up at the stranger, then shrugged.

"Okay. So long as you know what you want. Wait here. Lemme go find a scabbard for you." He said. The apprentice disappeared into the back of the store while the stranger counted his gold to pay for the blade. Once the exchange was finalized, the stranger took his new weapon and exited the armory, on to the Western pass, where his prey awaited him.

A lengthy walk ended in the location detailed in the quest ledger. There was nothing specific or out of place that would beg for investigation. The stranger looked around for any signs of the chimera, but there was nothing. He continued up the trade route, where he came between two stone cliff faces, tall as the trees on either side. It was the perfect setting for an ambush, but the stranger was counting on it. He drew his greatsword from his back and held it in his right hand. He started to pass through the gap, dragging the flat tip of the blade along the cliff face, making a loud grinding noise as he walked. When he got most of the way through, the stranger dragged his sword across the face quickly and pulled it off the wall, making a loud grind that echoed in both directions. He stopped and looked around, still nothing.

After letting out a sigh, the stranger started investigating the ground in the area to see if he could find what happened to the warrior girl's party. He turned his attention to the dirt, looking for tracks or clues. There was something sticking out of the dirt not too far away. The stranger approached, and upon closer inspection, it was the hilt of a straight sword. He pulled it from the dirt and looked it over. The blade was bent and broken short. However, it wasn't corroded, meaning it was used recently.

"No blood on it either. Poor soul never got a hit in." He said. The stranger stood up and looked around again. This time, there was a suspicious loose mound amongst the rest of the unpacked dirt in the area. He walked closer, broken sword in hand. He poked the broken end of the sword into the pile of dirt. There was a loud CLANG! and a shockwave went though the blade. Now substantially heavier, the stranger pulled the sword from the dirt. On its point, there was a bear trap.

"That's not big enough for a chimera. Someone put this here for a person to step on." The stranger said. He looked around again, only this time, more closely. There were other suspicious piles of dirt around. "Multiple traps. I'm suspecting some foul play." He said. The stranger's internal monologue was brought to a halt by the sound of falling rocks. He looked at the cliff wall, where more stones fell. Then came the sound of a lion's growl. The stranger looked up. There at the top of the cliff was the chimera, all three of its heads looking at him with murderous intent.

"Ah, I was wondering when you would show up." The stranger called to the beast. The chimera came barreling down the cliffside and lunged at the stranger, who rolled out of the way with ample time to recover. On his feet, the stranger drew the falchion from his left side and assessed the situation. The monster charged him and swatted with one of its enormous paws. The stranger sidestepped with relative ease, but then the snake-headed tail came quickly for a follow up attack. The stranger narrowly avoided its bite as he stepped away to create some distance.

"I'm going to need to take the snake out first if I want to get close enough." He thought. The beast and the stranger circled, as if sizing each other up. The stranger readied his falchion to go in for a strike. But before he could, the beast lowered its lion head, then exhaled a mighty fireball at the stranger with a roar. Eyes as dinner plates, the stranger dove out of the way, escaping having only singed some of his hair and coat. He quickly got to his feet, thinking,

"Of course. How could I forget its party piece? It breathes fire." He said, sarcastically. The chimera charged again, going for a tackle. The stranger stepped and rotated out of the way as the monster slammed down on the ground with a shockwave. The stranger slammed his cutting edge against the beast and ran it up the side, cutting a deep gash across the entire beast. It bled profusely as all three of its heads cried out in pain. The snake head tail flailed about, then attempted a snap bite on the stranger. More composed, the stranger swatted the snake with a heavy backhand from his armored arm, disorienting it. The snake struck again, less accurately this time. The stranger stepped back and executed a well timed slice, taking off the snake's head with one chop.

The headless tail flailed around wildly, spraying blood as the beast's lion and goat heads wailed in pain. The tail caught the stranger off-guard, hitting him square in the chest and knocking him off his feet. The stranger rolled through the dirt and only managed to get up to his hands and knees, gasping for air. After getting some semblance of his breath, the stranger looked back at the beast. The chimera lowered its goat head and prepared to charge. It lunged forward, trying to bludgeon the stranger to death. He rolled out of the way, barely avoiding being trampled. He stood up shakily, sword in hands. He watched the beast let out a sharp yelp and swung one of its paws back and forth. Clamped on two of its toes was an unsurfaced bear trap. This gave the stranger an idea.

"If I can take the legs out, it will make striking the body easier." He thought. The stranger and the beast started circling each other again. The beast, now limping, was starting to feel the pain. The stranger saw the timidness coming out of the lion's eyes, and went in for an attack. The chimera swatted at the stranger with its good paw. He sidestepped the attack and struck the monster's already injured leg, slicing a deep cut in the joint of its front leg. It bled profusely and let out an unspeakable noise and jets of fire from its two remaining mouths. The chimera fell onto its front quarter, standing only on 3 legs. The stranger raced to the hindquarters of the beast, drawing his executioner's blade and giving a swift hit to the second joint of the back right leg. There was a loud CRACK and the beast fell to its side. Now tired and defeated, the chimera let out a groan, as if accepting its fate. It simply laid there, breathing heavily. The stranger walked around to the beast's underside and pushed its forward leg aside, exposing the soft underside. He looked at the lion's head. It had its resolve and the stranger prepared for the final blow.

"I know you only do it because it's in your nature, but you know not the havoc you wreak. Have your rest." He said. He plunged the falchion's point through the soft skin and into the chimera's heart. It let out its last breath and it was gone. The stranger pulled the blade from the beast's body and looked it over. The point was all but gone, the edge was dull, and it was partially bent. He tossed it aside and sat down, leaning up against a rock and looking over his new kill. He breathed deeply and rested his head back on the rock and closed his eyes. He stayed there for a few minutes, and then started to get back up. When he opened his eyes, the stranger noticed something up the cliffside. For a brief moment, he thought he saw the silhouette of a person ducking away like they were trying to avoid being seen by him. Confused at first, he cast his gaze to the sky next. The sun was starting to set.

"I should probably get moving." He thought. The stranger placed his executioner blade back in the scabbard on his back and came to the lifeless chimera. He took two of the lion's claws, the points from both the goat's horns, and took both fangs from the still wriggling snake head. He was about to leave, but then he looked at the broken sword he'd inspected earlier. He thought of the warrior girl at the guild, so he took the broken blade with him as well. The look of the blade in his hand caused the stranger's attention to wander up his arm, then to the rest of his body. He was filthy, covered almost entirely in blood, dirt, and sweat.

"I should probably clean up before anything else." He thought.

The stranger returned home and dropped his sword in the corner. He removed his armor, followed by his coat and shirt. He washed himself and his clothes in the river and let them drip dry. Once dry, the stranger dressed without his coat or armor, revealing more of his handily scarred and bruised body. He took the ruby tag and his souvenirs in his pack and set off for the guild.

It was dark when the stranger arrived at the guild, but it was just as lively as ever. Adventurers were celebrating victories over great beasts and advancing in rank, but there again was the warrior girl from the night before, alone at the table, lost in a mug of ale. First, there was business to attend to. The stranger waded through the crowd until he reached the front desk, where there, the guild girl was doing paperwork. The stranger approached the desk and produced the ruby tag from his pack and dropped it on the desk in front of the girl. She looked up, and when she saw who it was, she bore a look of relief. She sighed.

"Thank the goddess it's you. I was getting worried you weren't going to come back." She said. The stranger said nothing and reached into his bag. He pulled out his souvenirs from the battle and placed them on the desk too.

"Claw of lion, horn of goat, and fang of snake. It's done." He said. The guild girl let out another sigh.

"Thank goodness. I can put that out of my mind." She took the ruby tag in hand and looked it over. "I won't have to send any more parties out for that thing not knowing if they're coming back." She looked back up at the stranger. "Thank you." She said, beaming.

"Aaaaanyways…" the stranger started. "About the quest reward."

"Oh, right. Sorry. I almost forgot." The guild girl got up from the desk and went into the back room. She came back a moment later with a hefty looking sack of gold. She placed it on the counter and smiled. "Here." The stranger reached out to take the sack. He gripped his hand around the top and the guild girl stopped him for a moment.

"Thanks again. You've really taken a weight off my shoulders with this." She said.

"Of course. If you've ever need of an exterminator, just ask." The stranger said in reply. The stranger placed his new earnings in his bag and he looked back at the girl.

"Oh and, try not to spend it all in one place." She said with a wink.

"No guarantees." The stranger said with a smug look. "Goodnight." The stranger left the counter and towards the tavern. He stopped after three steps and looked back at the guild girl with a puzzled expression.

"There is actually one matter I'm concerned about." The stranger said as he reapproached the desk. "I mentioned that girl yesterday, and how she lost her whole party. She said there was no reason for having been defeated as quickly as they were. I'm suspecting some foul play." The guild girl tilted her head and furrowed her brow.

"What makes you say that?" she asked.

"I looked around before the beast attacked me. There was a broken sword. There wasn't anything special about it, just broken. It hadn't rusted so it was recent, and it had no blood on it. It never got used."

"Why is it foul play?"

"After some careful looking, I found bear traps buried under light mounds of dirt. They were too small for the beast, so they would have to be for men. Person steps in the trap, beast kills them, culprit follows and picks the gear off the bodies and sells it." The guild girl's eyes widened at this information.

"That's… That's horrible!"

"I did see someone after I killed the monster. Didn't see a face, but the silhouette dis have some awfully shiny armor." The stranger said. They both stood in silence for a moment, then the stranger started to turn away.

"Just, do keep an eye out for me please." He said. Then he walked over to the tavern area and looked around. There were still people as always, carrying on and having a good time. There at the stranger's table again was the warrior girl, though this time without her armor. The stranger looked back at his bag thinking of the reward money, and the girl with none. He rummaged around in the sack and brought out a fist full of gold coins, more than enough to cover the cost of the falchion's. He dropped them in a partition inside his bag and approached the girl. He sat down on the opposite side as he had the day before. He looked at her and said,

"No solace today?" She put down her ale on the table.

"…No." she said in a downtrodden expression. The stranger sighed and put his elbows up on the table.

"I know your pain. I've lost everyone I've ever cared about. Even after centuries, it never gets any easier." The stranger said. The girl looked at him with a somewhat annoyed expression.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asked sternly.

"It was worth a shot, wasn't it?" the stranger asked humorously. The girl was not amused. She said nothing and simply looked away. The stranger looked down at his hands on the table. They sat in silence, the girl drinking her ale and the stranger occasionally drumming his fingertips. He looked at the girl again.

"Actually, I do have something that might put your mind at ease." He said. She looked back at the stranger, this time with caution and intrigue. He reached into his bag and produced the three souvenirs of his kill and set them on the table.

"Claw of lion. Horn of goat. Fang of snake. The beast won't be haunting you anymore." He said, quietly. The warrior girl's eyes widened as far as they could. She slowly reached for the lion's claw with a shaky hand. She picked it up and looked closely. Then she looked back at the stranger. Her mouth was open, but unable to form words. The stranger looked back into his bag.

"There's something else I have." He said. He pulled out a newly sharpened dagger made from the broken sword he'd found. He held it up so she could get a good look at it. "Did this belong to one of your friends?" he asked. He gripped the blade and then offered it to the girl hilt-first. She slowly reached for the dagger, just as shaky as before. She gripped the hilt and brought the blade before her. She placed both hands around the hilt and gripped it as hard as she could. Her eyes started to tear up, and a single drop fell onto the blade.

"I ground it down to a dagger's tip, so you can still use it at least." The stranger said. The girl closed her eyes and held the blade close to her chest, almost as if she was hugging it. She dropped her head and sobbed for a moment. The stranger turned away, giving her a minute to mourn her fallen allies. He looked around the room. There were a few people who were watching, whom the stranger tried not to make eye contact with. His gaze went towards the guild girl's desk. She was watching him with a smile. Not sure what to make of it, the stranger went to turn back to the girl. Once he was back faced the way he was before, the girl set the dagger down on the table and stood up. She walked around the table and sat down next to the stranger. She pulled him into a tight hug and began to cry into his shoulder.

"Thank you… So… much…" she mustered between sobs. The stranger felt a mixture of emotions, but mostly confusion, as this was not a situation he'd been in a very long time. Not sure what to do with his pinned down arms, the stranger looked around the room again. This time almost the entire tavern was watching. Unable to simply leave, the stranger put on the "What are you looking at?" face for everyone. One by one they all started to go back to what they were doing, and the warrior girl started letting go. Once she fully let go, she jittered for a split second and shook her head, as if coming back to reality. She rapidly sat up awkwardly straight and her hands snapped back in close to her body. Still teary eyed, she looked up at the stranger.

"S-sorry. It's just that… y-you don't know how much this means to me." She said, a bit more composed than earlier.

"I can't say I do. I haven't had someone to fight for for as long as I can remember. Cherish them while you can." He said. The girl managed to force a smile through her tears. The stranger gave her his smug half-smile.

"It's getting late. I need to be heading home." He said.

"Ah. Right. I should probably be doing the same." The girl said. The stranger stood up and picked up his bag and put the strap over his shoulder. He looked down at the girl and said,

"Goodnight. Maybe you'll be able to rest easier this time." The stranger turned and got two steps away, then he felt the sack of gold in his bag. He remembered the girl telling him she didn't have any money left from buying her now ruined gear. She wouldn't be able to get back into adventuring otherwise. The stranger sighed and fished the sack of gold out of his bag. He looked down at it in both of his hands and then he turned back to the warrior girl. He stepped back to her and set it on the table in front of her.

"Here. It's the reward for the quest. After a loss that takes your whole team and gear from you, I think you might need it more than I do. Goodnight." He said. The girl looked at the sack next to her, and upon realizing what it was, she quickly turned to the stranger, but he was already gone. The stranger exited the guild, the door slamming behind him as he set off into the night. He got halfway down the street when he heard the guild door open and a voice call out to him.

"Hey!" it said. The stranger turned around to see the warrior girl again jogging down the street to catch up. She skidded to a stop in front of the stranger.

"Is there something else you needed?" he asked.

"Would you…" she started, "Would you be interested in starting a party with me?"


	6. CH6 Life, Death, and Second Chances

"Would you be interested in starting a party with me?" The warrior girl asked. The stranger stood in silence, pondering the offer. He'd never been part of a team before, but the prospect of having other people to worry about was conflicting for him.

"A party? With only the two of us?" The stranger asked.

"Well you have to start somewhere." She said. The stranger looked off in thought again.

"I don't see why not. It might be nice to have someone watching my back instead of trying to stab it." He said after some resolve.

"Great!" the girl said, excited. "So I guess I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I suppose we will. Goodnight… again." The stranger said. The girl started to walk back to the guild. "Oh, and," the stranger started. The girl stopped and turned back to him, "Do get yourself some new gear. I can't have someone else dying on me too soon." The girl smiled, then nodded, and then carried on back to the guild. The stranger stood alone in the dark, starting off into the black horizon.

"Oh dear lord. What hapless mess have I gotten myself into this time?" he said to himself. He shook his head and walked off into the night. Once out of town, the stranger's mind was a flurry of thoughts. He'd no knowledge of running a team, let alone a partnership, especially with a lone girl. He rubbed his temples, attempting to clear his mind. He got to the end of the farm's fences, near his home, then the silence was broken by a voice, and one with malicious intent.

"Well, well. What do we have here?" it said. The stranger stopped in his tracks. From the shadows, there stepped a figure into the moonlight. It was a chisel-jawed mercenary with a one handed longswords. He had short, slicked hair and numerous scars. His armor was worn, but well maintained. It wasn't just some common cutthroat who fancied the bounty, it was a dead set professional.

"I was wondering when you would show up." He said. The stranger looked past the mercenary and then looked around.

"I'm sorry? Am I supposed to know who you are?" he asked. The mercenary chuckled.

"No." he started, "And it's going to remain that way. Whether or not you know me won't be relevant if you're dead." The stranger squinted.

"You don't really know who I am, do you?" he said condescendingly. The mercenary spat on the ground.

"With a price on your head worth more than what people even thought was in the world, I don't have to." Said the old merc in confidence.

"Quite easy to sound cocky to an unarmed man. Let's have you hand over that sword for a proper duel and see if your words still stand as firm." The stranger said with a smirk, holding out his hand, expecting a weapon to be placed in it.

"Oh no, I won't be having this chance be muddled by anything." The merc said with a smug grin. He whistled a tone and 3 more men emerged from the shadows behind him. They were the more run down type the stranger was used to seeing come after him, each with a pick of sword or axe. They started to advance on the stranger, whom didn't even shed a bead of sweat.

"Just as stupid as uninformed." The stranger muttered to himself. There were footsteps behind the stranger, but they stopped when they got close to him. The congregation looked in its direction. It was the warrior girl from earlier. She was petrified in her tracks, holding the large sack of gold the stranger had given her.

"What… What's going on here?" she asked in a mixture of confusion and fear. The stranger tried to step to her, arm outstretched.

"Go! You need to l-" he started. He was cut short by a surge of pain and impact. One of the brigands threw their axe and lodged it in the stranger's back. He stumbled, trying to stay standing. The mercenary approached the stranger and shoved his sword through the stranger's heart and out his chest. The stranger was unable to form any sound in his utter agony.

"A pity. I thought you would have at least offered a challenge." The merc said in a cocky manner. He pulled his sword out of the stranger's back and he dropped to the ground like a bag of rocks.

"NO!" the warrior girl cried out as she dropped the sack of gold and covered her mouth. "Wh-Why…" she started. The four men started walking up to the girl.

"You see little lady, some very important nobles want this man's head for murdering his king. I intended to cash in on the bounty. So look at it as… it's just business. Not murder." The mercenary said, as if it was supposed to lighten the blow. The girl started to back up as the sellswords grew closer. One of them stopped over the stranger's body to reclaim his axe. He pulled the axe from the stranger's corpse, and then flipped it over to gloat.

"Heh, not so tough are ya." He said smugly. The merc stepped to the bag of gold on the ground. He nudged it with his foot and then picked it up from the ground.

"That's quite a bit of gold you've got there. I suppose it's about enough to buy your life from us. Go on, leave. I suppose we won't chase." The merc said. One of the others looked the girl over and then back at the old mercenary.

"I dunno boss. We haven't had the embrace of a woman in a mighty long time." He said. The merc scratched his chin, thinking.

"I suppose you're probably right. Take the girl if you want." He said, waving his hand to her.

"No…" the girl said as she started tearing up while backstepping. The brigand next to the stranger's body was still mocking him, making faces and the like. Then he stopped. It looked as though the lifeless body had just twitched, as though jerking awake from a bad dream. The brigand started to look closer. The stranger's eyes blasted open and he grabbed the brigand by the throat with bone crushing force. He wanted to scream but was physically unable. The stranger slowly Rose from his pool of blood on the ground, making no move to release his grip. He stood all the way and looked into the brigand's dying face, eyes practically seething hellfire. He tightened his fist and crushed the cutthroat's larynx, then ripped it from his neck in a bloody entrail.

The brigand collapsed on the ground with his hands around his gaping throat, fighting for air. The stranger picked up the axe from the ground and walked towards the other three men, unaware of what was happening behind them. One of the other sellswords was about to lay a hand on the girl, then the stranger hurled the axe with full force at him. The axe lodged itself in the back of the brigand's skull, cleaving almost the entire way through and splashing a good amount of blood on to the girl. She screamed and the other two sellswords turned around in bewilderment to what had just happened.

There was the stranger, advancing on a warpath. The sword bearing brigand charged the stranger with an overhead slash. The stranger deflected the blade with a crescent kick. He set his kicking foot down, stepping forward and spinning into a hook kick, wrapping the back of his knee around the brigand's neck. He kicked the cutthroat's leg out from under him with his free leg. The brigand's fell forward with the stranger, his still caught head snapping his neck halfway through the fall. 5he stranger slowly started to creep towards the mercenary.

"A pity for no challenge? If you would have just given me the sword, I would simply best you in a duel and maybe let you run away with your tail between your legs. But since you insist on pissing me off, I'm just going to kill you." He said. The mercenary blinked rapidly, trying to see if his eyes were deceiving him. Alas, they were not.

"Wha- What manner of sorcery is this?" the merc said. The stranger sneered.

"It's no sorcery. It's just a little curse… called life." He said. The merc prepared for battle by taking his sword in both hands. He readied a strike and said,

"Nevertheless. How can you hope to defeat me with no weapon?" He lunged into a stab at the stranger, who clamped down on both sides of the blade between his palms. The stranger wrenched the blade over and pulled the merc in hard. He kicked the merc in the ribs and he finally let go of the sword. The merc stumbled back and the stranger flipped the blade over, landing the hilt in his hand.

"And now who has no weapon?" the stranger said with a smirk. "Your first mistake was coming after me. But your biggest blunder by far is thinking I needed a weapon to kill you." In the blink of an eye, the stranger stepped forward and executed a precision slice at the merc's exposed neck. He couched up blood and fell to his hands and knees, one over his throat. Bleeding excessively, the mercenary slowly looked up at the stranger and mustered the words,

"Wh… Who… are… you…?" The stranger crouched down to his level and looked him in the eye.

"You should have done your research. Now I guess you'll just have to die without knowing. Ironic, isn't it?" he said. He stood up and the mercenary coughed his death's breath and collapsed on the ground, bleeding out. The stranger looked the sword over then dropped it on the ground next to the lifeless body. He looked around, and there in the moonlight stood a petrified warrior girl. The stranger came close to her. Her face now illuminated in the moon's view revealed tears streaming down her face.

"Are you okay?" the stranger asked. The girl said nothing but kept her eyes locked on his. He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pushed his hand aside.

"What was that?" she asked quietly, but then she shouted. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" The stranger shifted his mouth and looked around.

"It's…" he started. He looked back at the tear-laden girl. "It's very complicated. It wasn't meant for anyone to see." The girl took a step back away from the stranger.

"What are you?" she asked. The stranger brought his palms together in a begging motion.

"Please, just, calm down. I can explain, but I need you to listen." He said. The girl looked around, almost as if panicked.

"I need to think about this." She said. The stranger sighed. He looked down at the ground and noticed the sack of gold at his feet. He picked it up and offered it to the girl.

"Take it. It's yours." He said, sincerely. The girl slowly outstretched her hand. She took the sack and then quickly brought it into her chest. She started to walk past the stranger, but then he put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her, and she tensed up. She slowly locked eyes with the stranger.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He said. The girl pushed past and quickly walked away. The stranger turned and watched her saunter off. "Hey!" he called. "I'm still willing to form a party with you." He said. The girl stopped for a moment. She turned her head, as if looking back at him, then carried on into the night. The stranger stood alone in the road between the fresh corpses. He looked at all of them one by one.

"Well that's a great way to start our relationship." He said to himself. The stranger dragged all the bodies off into the woods and dug a hole big enough to accommodate the four of them. He filled it in and went back to the road for their weapons. He gathered them all up, then he looked at the axe that was lodged in his back not long ago.

"That's a well forged axe. I could use something like this." He said. He brought all the weapons into his cabin and went to bed for the night.

The stranger awoke around noon time with a cough. He wasn't a fan of the resurrection process, it made him groggy afterwards. He rubbed his eyes and sat up in his bed. He pulled his shirt off and examined the three new holes in it from the night.

"Great. Now I need to have this fixed as well." He thought. He looked down at the bed, having rubbed some of the blood out of his shirt and into his sheets. "Some new bedding wouldn't hurt either." The stranger got up and put on his coat with no shirt, and then his boots, grabbed his bag, and walked out the door and off to town.

The stranger made it to town and found his way to the market plaza. There he found a tailor shop, with a fully open front wall and numerous sets of clothes and sheets on display. There was an elderly woman in a sun hat and glasses in a rocking chair under the shade of the awning outside the inner store. She appeared to be knitting something. The stranger started perusing the wares, and she looked up when he got close.

"Oh, well hello dear. Is there something I can help you with?" she said with a smile, unwavering from her knitting. The stranger met her gaze and returned a smile.

"Hello. Do you run this shop?" he asked.

"Aye, I do." She answered.

"You make all your wares yourself?"

"Indeed. It can be a laborsome task, but it keeps me occupied."

"It's a good trade skill to have. A shame few want to learn it nowadays."

"True, a shame to be sure. Now, with that cleared up, is there something I can do for you?" the seamstress asked again. The stranger unfurled his shirt in both hands.

"Yes, actually. I was wondering if you might be able to mend this?" he said, holding up the shirt for the woman to see. She put down her needles and took the stranger's shirt. She looked it over and held it up into the light, clarifying its new, large holes.

"Oh, my. A spot of confrontation have we?" she said, looking at the stranger with raised eyebrows.

"I suppose you could say that." The stranger said.

"Now, these old eyes of mine aren't as good as they once were, but even I can tell it might be better to just toss it away and get a new one." The seamstress said, looking the shirt over again.

"Ordinarily I would agree with you, but it's like a family quilt. There's something of a sentimentality to it that I'd rather keep." The stranger said, wondering how many of his possessions were of the same manner. The old tailor chuckled, then she said,

"Oh alright dear. I'll see what I can do. Was there anything else you needed?"

"Yes. I actually came looking for bedsheets." The stranger said as he went back to looking the selection of bedding over. He picked a set he liked and brought it over to the seamstress. "These will do." He said.

"Good choice." The seamstress said in agreement. The stranger fished some gold from his bag and placed it in the woman's hand and she handed the sheets back to him. "Thank you dear. Oh, before you go, I have something for you." She said, slowly standing up from her chair. The stranger furrowed his brow, confused as to what this woman could have meant. The seamstress hobbled over to the loom at the back of the shop and opened a drawer behind it. From it, she produced a folded, wool-stuffed quilt. She walked back over to the stranger and placed the quilt in his hands.

"Here, for you." She said.

"Oh, thank you. But, I can't accept this. It's too-"

"Oh nonsense." The seamstress said, cutting off the stranger. "My grandchildren wouldn't appreciate it the way you do. You take it. It gets cold around here sometimes."

"…Thank you very much." The stranger said, awkwardly. He'd never been given a gift before, as far as he could remember.

"You're welcome dear. Not many people stop to talk to an old woman these days." The seamstress said with a smile. The stranger, unsure of what to say in the midst of all this kindness, said nothing. The old woman put her hand on his shoulder.

"Come back tomorrow. I'll see if there's anything I can do to fix your shirt." She said.

"Very well. You take care now." The stranger said with his half smile. He compacted his sheets tighter and stuffed them into his bag, but the quilt was too bulky to do the same. He exited the shop, examining the gifted quilt. It was heavy, very intended for colder weather. The stranger stopped and unfolded it, held it up and looked it over. The stranger heard footsteps on the other side of the quilt. They stopped, then there was the voice of a girl.

"It's a very nice quilt. She makes the best in town." The stranger lowered it down to where he could see over it. On the other side, there stood the warrior girl with her hands together in front of her and an uneasy expression. The stranger raised an eyebrow.

"You came back." The stranger said, somewhat surprised. The girl looked down at her feet.

"I'm.. sorry for how I reacted last night." She said. "That's not exactly something I'm used to seeing."

"To be fair, that was generally the same reaction I get anyway." The stranger said while folding his quilt. "Why did you come back to me?" The girl looked back up at the stranger.

"I thought about it, and I guess I never really gave you a chance to explain yourself." She said. The stranger walked past her.

"Come. I'll explain what you want to know over lunch." He said. The girl did as she was told and went along with the stranger. They sat down at a plaza diner and ordered their food. The stranger looked over at the girl and said,

"Well, here we are. What would you like to know first."

"Why did you not die?" the girl blurted out.

"Blunt, but okay." The stranger started, "Ignoring the technicalities of it, I'm still human… sort of. I live, but I'm cursed to it. Should I fall, I simply rise from the dead some time later."

"How is that possible?"

"I don't know. Black magic? Blood sacrifice?" the stranger said. The girl kept her confused expression.

"Ooookay then. Well, that guy said you're wanted for killing your king? You're a criminal aren't you?"

S- "Well, yes and no. Yes for regicide, but no because that empire has been fallen for hundreds of years. I've committed a crime against a country that no longer exists."

G- "Why did you do it?"

S- "Now that's a long story."

G- "We have time."

S- "I'll shorten it as best I can. Anyways, I did not have a good childhood. My parents were executed when they couldn't afford the taxation. After they burned down our home, I had nowhere to go. I did unspeakable things to survive because I had to. I fought, stole, spied, all in the name of not dying. One day by some stroke of luck I save a princess from brigand's and she begged the king to put me in royal schooling and Knight's training, the lot, but none of it was for me. I was a better fighter than everyone, and the crown didn't want to lose that. After that, I was the king's hand. I killed countless people for him without questioning why. There were days my humanity started to claw its way back into my soul. I wondered why I did what I did for the king, then a day came where he commanded me to kill a child in the street. I told him no, and that he was a tyrant. He didn't like that much, so I was stripped of all titles and arrested."

G- "So that's why you killed him?"

S- "No. He put me in the arena and put a bounty on my head and whoever could kill me would claim it. Naturally, being the best fighter in the continent, the bodies piled up and they had to call an intermission to clean it up. I escaped my escorts and made my way to the king's loft and removed his head with the same sword I carry around. Don't know about what happened after my escape. Country fell into chaos and was eventually destroyed. All these people that keep coming for my head don't know the reward they're seeking is null."

The warrior girl sat in silence for a minute, processing the story she'd heard. The waitress came and sat their food on the table in front of them. They were about to eat, but then the girl spoke up.

"Then how exactly did you get cursed?" she asked.

"Not sure. I've crossed a lot of people in my travels, not all of them good of heart. Bound to be one of them." The stranger answered.

"I guess that's really all I really needed to know." The girl said. The two finished eating, the stranger paid the bill, and they both stood up from their table. The girl looked to the stranger and said,

"If you don't mind, I could use your help finding a new weapon."

"Now there's something I can help with."


	7. CH7 Misunderstandings

The warrior girl and the stranger strolled into the smithy's shop. They looked over the weapons with few words, then the girl looked over at the stranger, who was looking over curved swords.

"What do you think I should get?" She asked with a cutesy expression. The stranger avoided the childlike gaze and said,

"It depends on what you're hunting. Axes are good for beasts with rough hides that are difficult to tend. Swords are better for more fleshy targets, usually bipedal and humanoid." The girl furrowed her brow as she cast her gaze to the racks of straight swords.

"What would you recommend for more general purpose?" she asked.

"If I had to fall back on one type of weapon, I would likely choose a mace." The stranger said as he picked up the aforementioned weapon from a rack to his side. "Blunt force will inflict the most damage on most targets. It's effective against armor, natural or otherwise, good for breaking bones, easy to use, and is very low maintenance. It may not puncture hided enemies, but it will still hurt like hell. More damage? Swing harder." The stranger tossed the bludgeoning tool to the girl. She caught it and felt its heft and took a couple practice swings.

"Yeah. I could get behind this." She said, excited.

"Its main downfall is against fleshy or fatty enemies. It's good to have a sharp weapon to fall back on, such as a longsword." The stranger said as a follow up. The girl looked up and down the sword racks, then back at the stranger and said,

"You sure do know a lot about fighting." The stranger shrugged and said,

"I've been around a long time. You learn things as you go." The girl picked up a sword from the wall.

"This one looks good." She said. She handed the blade to the stranger, who looked it over. It was a straight sword, no longer than average, but it was light at the end with most of the weight set at the base of the blade itself. It was thicker at the base and the whole blade was rock solid, and the whole length tapered to a very sharp point. The stranger held it out, pointed outward and rotated his hand.

"it resembles and estoc, but it's too thick. It has a remarkable tendency to try and balance the point out, almost as though it was meant for thrusting as much as slashing." He said. He handed the sword back to the girl. "Go ahead and try it. Don't think I've used a sword like that before." She felt the balance of the weapon.

"I like it. I'll stick with these." She said. "Now, what about armor?"

"What you had before is fine really, you just need some knee and shin guards." The stranger said. The duo rounded up their new gear, paid, then made for the guild.

The two made for the quest board and looked it over. It was mostly picked over by the morning's adventurers, but there were plenty of tasks still left. Most of which were uninteresting or unappealing to the two of them, but then the girl pulled a ledger down from the board.

"Hey, what about this?" she asked, handing him the page. He looked it over.

"A necromancer terrorizing the haunted woods to the east. Could be interesting. Necromancers generally mean skeletons. I guess you'll have a chance to try out your new weapon." He said.

"Let's do it!" the girl said, eager to get hunting. They brought the quest details to the guild girl at her desk. She looked up from her writing at the two of them.

"Oh, it's you two. What can I do for you?" she asked. The warrior girl handed over the quest ledger.

"We're going on this quest as an official party." She said.

"Alright then. One moment please, just need to make a note of this." The guild girl said as she began writing down their party details on a new sheet. The finished her scrawling and looked up at the pair. "There we are. You're all set. Happy hunting!" the guild girl said cheerfully. They were turning to leave, but then the guild girl piped in again.

"Actually, before you go…" the two stopped and looked at her. The guild girl looked at the stranger and said, "I have something for you." From inside of her desk, she produced a wax sealed letter and a glossy black tag. She handed then to the stranger and said,

"Congratulations, you're now Obsidian ranked." The stranger accepted the items and looked at them, then back at the guild girl.

"Oh, thank you." He said awkwardly. She winked at him and waved, and the stranger and his companion exited the guild. They walked along the road up to the stranger's cabin.

"What were you doing out here last night anyway?" he asked as they walked.

"My parents' farm is up this direction. I would have taken this road anyway." She answered.

"Fair enough." The short conversation ended outside the path to the cabin. "If you would so kindly wait here for a moment. Just need to grab my sword and armor." He said as he started to approach his abode. He stepped inside and closed the door. He emptied his bag containing his quilt and bedsheets onto his bed and then looked at the letter in his hand. He broke the wax seal and unfolded the page to read its content; a personal note from the guild girl. It read:

"I talked to the board of advisors about you, and I have a proposition. The board was hesitant because of your vague past, but they were impressed by your victory over the chimera by yourself, as well as the dragon vertebrae. I told them some about your personality, and they like the idea that you're willing to do something because it needs to be done rather than just for a reward. Anyway , what I'm getting at is, the guild needs a 'problem solver.' A highly skilled adventurer able to take down some of the nuisance targets. We've taken down countless quests because teams left for the hunt and never came back. I believe you may be our solution. Please do consider this offer, you would be doing the guild a great service, and it would be in your debt. I will wait after hours for a few days for your answer. Please come soon."

The stranger took a deep breath and pondered on the guild girl's request for a moment. He shook his head and dropped the letter on his table and quickly put his coat and armor on. He slung his greatsword and scabbard over his back and exited the cabin. He met up with the warrior girl and they kept walking.

"So what was the letter for?" she asked.

"It was nothing. Just a congratulatory note." He lied. The girl was immediately puzzled.

"That's weird. I never got a note when I ranked up." She said as she held out her emerald tag from her neck.

"I don't know. A sign of affection maybe?" the stranger asked. The girl simply looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "That's a real question. I legitimately have no idea."

"What makes you think I know?" she retorted.

"You've likely gotten to experience more positive personal interaction than I ever did." He said in reinforcement. The girl's expression shifted from puzzled to dumbfounded. "I have been around for over 1000 years and women are still a fickle creature that I have yet to fully understand." She said nothing and simply looked at the stranger in disbelief. Unsure of how to even respond, she shook her head and shrugged it off.

The pair walked in partial silence, occasionally commenting on the scenery and discussing tactics until they came to the warrior girl's farm. The stranger waited outside as she ran inside the farmhouse. He looked around at the property. The barn and house looked quite old, which suggested that either the girl's family was rather poor, or her parents were becoming more elderly. His sightseeing was interrupted by the closing of the house door and clinking of metal. The stranger turned to see the girl emerging from the house, clad in her dark green armor, with her new weapons at her side. She approached the stranger.

"Let's go." She said with a smile. The two started to turn and leave the farm, but the stranger heard the sound of the door opening again. He looked over his shoulder, and there was who he assumed was the girl's father. He was an enormous man with a bald head and a beard to rival a dwarf's. He glared at the stranger, who returned the same superstitious expression. The girl looked at the stranger and said,

"Oh, don't worry about my father. He's just protective is all."

"As a parent should be." The stranger said with understanding. The duo walked in relative silence, until the stranger said,

"I don't think I ever asked, what about you? I know little of your past, aside from your team."

"Well, let's see. My father used to be a legendary adventurer of unmatched strength. My mother was a baker. My mother made the best sweets in town, and my father would go to her bakery after every adventure. He loved her snacks, and eventually they fell in love themselves. Then they had me. My father was still questing at the time, so my mother brought me to the bakery most of the time. She showed me how to do some baking, then my father would come home and show me some things about weapons and fighting.

One day though, while my father was out, a group of goblins were preying on our house. A group of about six or seven attacked me and my mother in broad daylight. My mother is no slouch, but there was no way we would come out on top. They crippled my mother's leg and tried running away with young me. My father narrowly came home in time to save us. He'd just finished a quest and saw what was happening. He killed all the goblins, quite brutally. Overall my mother and I were fine, but she was never able to walk the same again. My mother couldn't get to and from the bakery anymore, so she had to sell it. My father didn't want to risk losing us like that again, so he gave up adventuring and took up cattle farming and agriculture so he could be home with us. My mother helps out where she can, but ultimately my father does the majority of the work. He doesn't mind though."

The stranger said nothing, simply processing the information. Then he looked up and said,

"I suppose I can respect that. It's nice to hear a story not so grim as mine." The two were so lost in conversation, they hadn't realized that they'd wandered into a foggy deadwood. They stopped and looked around.

"This definitely looks like somewhere you'd find a necromancer." The girl said. "Where do we even start?"

"No where. We simply look for clues and go from there." The stranger said as he drew his greatsword from his back and rested the flat of the blade on his shoulder. And look for clues they did. The pair split off from the road and went searching through the trees, until they heard a noise. They both stopped and listened. It sounded like footsteps on leaves and broken twigs.

"Too much stumbling to be a person, unless they're drunk." The stranger said. The steps got closer. Then came the sound that was a mixture of hissing and gargling. A silhouette cut through the mist and stumbled into view. The two let out a sigh at the sight of a lone zombie. It held up its arms in a grabbing motion and hobbled towards them.

"Eh, aim for the head. Easy." The stranger said and took his sword hilt in both hands and swung the flat of the blade like a bat at the corpse's head. With little effort, the head went flying off into the mist and the body dropped lifelessly to the ground.

"It's a sign at least, right?" the girl asked.

"To an extent. The undead will wander around aimlessly until they're killed. Someone made this zombie but it doesn't tell us where." The stranger said.

"We might be able to cover more ground if we split up." The girl suggested.

"We're not doing that. It will be incredibly easy to get surrounded or ambushed somewhere like this." The stranger replied with caution. "Best if we stick together." The pair continued to search the dead forest and found nothing. Then they came into a clearing, where the fog was thinner. They walked into the open section and found a skull on the ground; one resembling an ogre.

"That's not a good sign." The girl said. There was a light rumbling from beneath the ground. A huge skeletal hand emerged from the ground. Taking action, the warrior girl swung her mace at the hand. There was a loud *CRACK* and bones flew everywhere. The ogre skeleton kept rising and eventually was fully out of the ground. Using its free hand, it picked up its head and placed it on the stump of neck. It brandished a massive battle axe and other human and bipedal skeletons started coming from the ground, also bearing weapons. They started to surround the duo, who went back to back.

"What's the plan?" the girl asked.

"Take the small ones out first. The ogre is big and slow, worry about him later. Destroy the skulls. I don't know if that keeps them down for good, but it's our best bet." The stranger said, readying his sword. The skeletal ogre chattered its teeth and raised its axe. The team split as soon as the axe came down and slammed the ground between them. The stranger charged the ogre and smashed out one of its knees with his greatsword. The skeleton fell over onto the ground and the stranger stepped into a spinning upward hack, shattering another skeleton into hundreds of pieces.

The warrior girl blocked attack after attack with her shield. She pushed the bone-men back and swung her mace at head level. Their skulls cracked on impact and she hit them again across the ribcage. Their torsos disintegrated and she looked to engage another target. The stranger was hacking left and right, sending bones everywhere and crushing skulls under his foot. The warrior girl fought admirably, shattering heads atop their necks. Eventually there was only the girl, the stranger, and the ogre skeleton left. The ogre had finally put its leg back in place and stood up. The beast, predictably, said nothing and swept its axe at the pair. The girl jumped back out of the way and fell over, the stranger ducked low enough to lay down under the swinging axe. Once the axe past, the stranger sprung back up onto his feet and the girl scrambled back to hers. The ogre started to swing its axe the other direction. The stranger swung his greatsword to meet it. There was a loud clash of the metals, and the stranger hit it with enough force to recoil the axe and shatter a chunk of its rusted head. He looked at the girl.

"Same deal as before, take out the legs!" he shouted. The stranger swung his blade at the ogre's hand, shattering it on impact and dropping the axe. The girl rushed in and transferred her momentum into an overhead smash. She laid the mace's head down on the ogre's right knee with full force, turning into bone shrapnel as it broke apart. The ogre fell to its broken knee and the girl turned and did the same to the left knee. The ogre collapsed onto its back and the stranger brought the flanged end of his blade down on the skull, breaking it into nothing more than shards of marrow. The two stood alone, no more skeletons. The girl was trying to catch her breath, but the stranger hadn't broken a sweat. He looked at the girl, with her hands on her knees.

"Good job." He said. She blushed and smiled. The stranger looked at all the skeleton remains and weapons. He picked up a wicked looking curved sword. About halfway up the length, it curved backwards and then arched over similar to a hook.

"Goddess, what is that?" the girl asked, now more composed.

"This is a shotel. It's an Eastern made weapon type. The blade curves forward because it was meant to reach around shields." The stranger said, demonstrating on the girl's own shield. "I always wanted one for myself. Too bad this one is rusted beyond repair." The stranger tossed the sword aside. The girl turned around abruptly, as though something caught her attention.

"What is it?" the stranger asked.

"Do you hear that?" she said. The stranger paused and listened for a moment.

"It sounds like… whistling. Like someone blowing across a reed. Only… lots of them." He said. They both looked in the direction it appeared to be coming from.

"It's… it's getting louder." The girl said, alarmed. It was getting louder, and quickly. Then from the mist came a swarm of flying skulls.

"Oh shit!" they said in unison. They ducked under the cloud of bone and teeth and it flew away to turn around. The skulls came for another bombardment before the two could get back up. The girl curled up and hid behind her shield and the stranger readied his armored arm. The skulls descended and battered them like rocks. While the girl was mostly protected, the stranger swung his armored arm in a backhand motion and swung his sword upward, cutting the swarm apart. The cloud of bones dispersed away long enough for them to get to their feet. The stranger stood up quickly and helped the girl up. He pointed off in the direction the skulls came from.

"That was a pointed attack, they're watching us! Run that way! Go!" he said in an urgent manner. The two set off in a dead Sprint to the treeline with the skulls in pursuit, growing ever closer. The two of them successfully made it into the trees, which broke the skulls' chase somewhat. The pair didn't stop running when they made it into the trees. The stranger kept looking ahead, then they quickly came upon the shadow of a person, who quickly turned and sprinted off.

"There!" the girl shouted. They set their sights on the shadowy figure, ignoring the swarm of skulls. They ran as fast as they could, ducking and weaving between dead trees and bushes and closing in on their target. They turned slightly and held up their hand, as though casting a spell. A skeleton hand sprouted from the ground and grabbed the stranger's foot, tripping him. The girl stopped to help.

"No! Go! Don't lose him!" the stranger shouted. The girl ran off after the necromancer. The stranger pulled his leg free of the hand and stood up. Two orc skeletons rose from the dirt with crude weaponry. The stranger readied to engage. The girl kept running, growing closer and closer to the shadow. They both emerged into another opening, this one smaller than the last but no thinning fog, and the shadow vanished. The girl, now exhausted, stopped running and took several deep breaths. She leaned over, putting her hands on her knees. She stood up and looked around, this time lost and alone.

"Great. Now what?" she mumbled to herself. She took a drink from her canteen, then she felt the ground moving beneath her. She stumbled back as more human skeletons emerged from the dirt. These skeletons seemed different to the girl. Like they were hastily made from whatever bones laying around seemed to fit. Their weapons were just whatever bone or club-like branch they could pick up. The warrior girl tried to ready her mace, but found it rather hard. She was much more exhausted than she thought. She held up her shield as one of the skeletons attempted to hit her with a femur. The bone slammed into the shield and almost threw her completely off balance. Another skeleton took advantage of her and kicked her in the side, knocking her over and dropping her mace and shield. The skeletons began to slowly creep in. Unsure of what to do and certain she was going to be beaten to death, she curled up in fear.

"NOOOO!!" She shouted. Her eyes started selling with tears at the thought of her impending death. Then from the mist, there came the voice of another girl.

"No, wait! Stop!" it said. The skeletons stopped advancing and backed off. Then they simply fell apart where they stood into incoherent piles. A black haired girl jogged into view, revealing that the necromancer that the team had been chasing was in fact a necromantress. She wore dingy and tattered black robes that didn't quite cover her legs or arms entirely. She had multiple bracelets, anklets, charms and trinkets of various types of bone, tooth, and claw. The tips of her ears poked out from the sides of her scraggly hair. Her skin was pale and she had runic tattoos under her azure eyes and down her face. When she got a good look at the dirty and bruised warrior girl, she gasped and covered her mouth.

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry! Are you okay?!" she said as she scurried to the warrior girl's side and crouched down. The necromantress took the warrior girl by the arm and helped her stand up and brushed the dirt off. The warrior girl shook her head in confusion.

"Okay, this is really confusing." She started. "You're the necromancer in the woods?"

"I- I guess. I haven't seen any others around." The necromantress said. At that moment, there was a loud crack from the trees. Out of the fog there came the skull of an orc like someone had thrown it. The stranger stepped through the mist and crushed the skull with his foot. He looked up at the two girls, first at the warrior girl, then with a raised eyebrow at the necromantress. He looked back at the warrior girl.

"This is the necromancer?" he asked in disbelief.

"Apparently so." She replied.

"I didn't quite think the person we'd been sent to kill was a young girl." On hearing those words, the necromantress' ears perked up and her eyes widened.

"S-someone… wants me… d-dead….?" She asked in disheartened tone. She dropped her hands to her side and looked down as her eyes started to water. She slowly dropped to her knees and then sat back. "I-I guess if you came all this way to kill me, you should just do it. Please do it quickly." She said. She tensed up and squeezed her eyes closed, preparing to be beheaded. The stranger and the warrior girl shot each other the "What are you doing?" look. Then he asked,

"Just how old are you exactly?" the necromantress eased up some.

"Wh-what? Y-You're not going to kill me?" She asked in distress and relief.

"Answer the question please."

"S-seventeen. Why?" she said with a confused expression. The stranger rolled his eyes and rubbed his temples.

"Of course the one quest we pick has me trying to kill kids again." He said in annoyance. The necromantress looked at the warrior girl with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

"S-so, you're not going to kill me?" she said.

"No. Did you want me to?" the stranger asked.

"No. I'd rather not." The necro-girl said. "But I don't want to have to keep running for the rest of my life." The stranger and the warrior girl look at each other. She nodded to the the girl with raised eyebrows, and the stranger rolled his eyes and looked off as though he didn't particularly care. They back at the puppeteer of the dead.

"Then don't." the warrior girl said.

"How? What do you mean?" the necromantress asked.

"Come with us. You'll be safe." The warrior said in confidence.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" the necromantress asked with skepticism. The stranger pulled a piece of paper out of his bag and looked it over.

"The quest ledger specifies a necromancer, not a necromantress. It doesn't list any visual details, or really even anything you're capable of. If you travel with us instead of by yourself, people probably won't so much as give you a second glance." The stranger put the ledger back into his bag. "It also doesn't say how to "deal with" you, so we can still claim the quest reward."

"Al… alright. I'll do it. I'll go with you." The necromantress said. She stood up and brushed herself off. The stranger looked around their surroundings. It was all dead trees and fog with no real sense of direction. He looked back at the necromantress and said,

"As recompense for sparing your life, could you find out way out of these woods?"


	8. CH8 Back to bite you in the ass

The necromantress guided the stranger and the warrior girl out of the woods and back into the fading sunlight. Wordlessly, the stranger and the warrior girl made for the guild. Shortly after beginning their hike, they noticed their new companion wasn't following. They stopped and looked back at her. The necromantress looked exceedingly nervous. The two approached her and the warrior girl asked,

"Is something wrong?" The puppeteer tensed up.

"I-I've never been around a lot of people. What if they know who I am? What if they all try to kill me?" she said anxiously. The stranger sighed and dropped his shoulders.

"Look, just, stick with us, and try not to draw attention to yourself. Trust me, no one will give you a second glance." He said. He extended a hand to her and said, "Now, will you come with us… please?" The necromantress took a deep breath, took his hand and walked along with the adventurers. The sun had set halfway through their trek back to the Adventurers' Guild. The warrior girl pestered the necromantress with questions.

"So what's your story?" she asked. The necromantress hesitated, then said

"Umm… M-My mother was an elf, my father was human. M-My mother was a servant to my father. He was a necromancer too, really powerful. He was very abusive towards me and my mother because she didn't give him a son. I wasn't as good at magic as my mother, and I wasn't as strong as a human, so my father didn't want anything to do with me. He tried one last time with me by teaching me necromancy. I was okay at it, but not to his standards, so he gave up. He whipped me and my mother for no reason, until eventually my mother couldn't take it anymore, and it killed her. My mother told me to run with her last dying breath. And… and…" the necromantress stuttered. Then she clung to the stranger's arm as though fearing her father would suddenly appear. "H-He still keeps her resurrected body like some kind of trophy. And.. I don't want to talk about it anymore."

The necromantress tried fighting the tears, but failed. She buried her face in the stranger's arm and they stopped walking. The stranger looked down at the girl with a disheartened expression, then at the warrior girl, whose eyes were like platters and had both hands over her mouth. She swallowed and said,

"That's… That's horrible! How could someone terrorize their own family like that?"

As soon as the words hit his ears, the stranger had an epiphany. Using his free hand, he pulled the quest ledger from his bag and unfolded it. He looked over the details again. It gave no description of the necromancer's appearance, but it did inform of a militia of armored skeletons ransacking settlements as though they were looking for something. He was about to say something, but he stopped. He looked down at the necromantress, who still had a death grip on his arm.

"No. Now is not the time." He thought. He put the page back into his bag and with his empty hand, he patted her on the top of her head. At the stranger's touch, the necromantress started to ease up. The stranger could feel the circulation coming back to his arm, and the girl looked up at him with a glimmer in her eye that hadn't been there before.

"I can't say that I relate," he started. "I've been around for over 1000 years, but that's not a pain even I can imagine. I can't right your past, but I can make your future brighter." The necromantress looked up at the stranger with a light in her eyes. She'd never experienced happiness, so she didn't understand what she was feeling. All she knew was that it was welcome. She didn't have any words, but the stranger did. He nodded down the road.

"Let's go. It's getting dark." He said. The trio set off down the road again, this time with the necromantress on her own two feet. Night had fallen when they reached the warrior girl's house. She was about to bid them farewell when she stopped in her tracks and turned back to the stranger and the necromantress.

"Come to think of it, do you think you might be interested in staying here with me tonight?" she said to their new companion. The necromantress pondered the offer.

"Are… Are you sure?" she asked nevously.

"Yeah, of course." The warrior girl said with an enthusiastic nod. "My mother loves guests. My father… well, he's a bit of an acquired taste, but he has a good heart. Come on, I'll show you in."

"Okay…" the necromantress said, unsure of what exactly she was getting into. The warrior girl took her by the hand and started to lead her to the house.

"Before you go," the stranger started. The girls stopped and looked back at him. "Once you get her situated, could I talk to you for a minute?" he said to the warrior girl. She nodded and progressed into her house. The stranger stood alone outside for some few minutes. Then he heard the door open, followed by heavy footsteps. There into the moonlight stepped the warrior girl's father, battle axe in hand.

"You there, stranger." He bellowed. The stranger looked at the axe, and back at the father.

"I certainly hope you weren't coming to challenge me to a duel." The stranger said sarcastically.

"Choose your words carefully, boy." The father said, unenthused. He approached the stranger to a foots distance. He was a solid head taller too. "What are you doing with my daughter?"

"We're an adventuring party. And if it's something else, I'm not interested in courting your daughter." The stranger said in a snarl. The father started to puff up his chest, implying the stranger must have struck a nerve. He noticed and rolled his eyes. "Look, I've no doubt in my mind that your daughter will make an excellent wife to someone, someday. But I myself am not interested in romance."

This seemed to calm the father down some. He breathed in and exhaled loudly through his nose. He slowly brought his axe head up and pressed the edge against the stranger's neck. He leaned in and said,

"Hear me well, boy. My little girl better not come home with any injuries. Any anything I do find, I will do to you." The stranger eyed the axe, then grabbed the handle. He pressed the axe head into his own neck even harder, enough to draw blood. The father raised an eyebrow.

"You don't earn your battle scars by sitting back and letting someone else to do the work. I'd like to think that you would already know that." The stranger forcibly pushed the axe head away. "You raised a warrior. Don't think so little of her. And if you really want to kill me, you better do it. And if you fail, just know that I won't." The father furrowed his brow and raised his head, almost as though in acceptance.

"Hmmmm…" he hummed in thought. Their conversation was broken by the sound of the door opening. They both looked to find the warrior girl, having shed her armor, standing there with her hands on her hips and looking quite annoyed.

"Father, what are you doing?" she asked sternly.

"Nothing dear." The father answered. He turned and started walking back to the house. He turned and kissed the warrior girl on her forehead when he passed her. "Good night sweeting." He shot the stranger one last look of evaluation before disappearing into his home. The girl approached the stranger and said,

"So what did you need to talk about?" He fished the quest page from his bag and held it up.

"We can't turn this in." he said.

"What? Why?" she asked.

S- "The ledger says skeletons are shaking down settlements like they're looking for something. The girl is terrified of the world and I doubt she could conjure up that many bone-men at any given time. This quest couldn't possibly be for her."

G- "So you think it's her father looking for her causing all this havoc?"

S- "Precisely. I or we are going to have to kill him to end this nonsense. But, we're going to need her to find him."

G- "Why didn't you bring this up earlier?"

S- "I was going to, but I didn't want to ruin her first time feeling happy. We should probably give this a couple days at least. I don't want to drag her back into the fire we just ran out of. I'll hunt for her father and maybe I'll get lucky. I'll tell the guild girl what we've found when I get the chance."

G- "Fair enough."

A silence fell between the two. Then the stranger spoke up again.

"How did she take to this?" he asked.

"Pretty well actually. She's quite the ravenous eater, though I don't think she's ever had a decent meal, let alone a whole one. I thought she was gonna gorge herself. My mother is happy though. She's got the chance to be a mother to someone again with me gone all the time." She said.

"At least we got one thing sorted out. It's probably time I head home. Good night." The stranger said. He turned away and the girl waved him off. The stranger passed his cabin, dropped his sword inside, and set off for the guild in the dead of the night. The guild door was unlocked when he arrived. He stepped inside and looked around. It was almost pitch black, save for a single lantern on a table. The guild girl sat at that table, fighting to stay awake whilst reading a book. She looked up when the door opened.

"Hello?" she said into the dark. The stranger stepped forward into the lamplight.

"Don't worry. It's just me." He said. The guild girl put a hand over her chest in relief.

"Oh, thank goodness you came. I'm not sure how many of these late nights I can do. Anyway, do you have an answer for our offer?" she asked.

"Given the way things have been going, I don't think I have much of a choice." He said, somewhat jokingly.

GG- "What do you mean?"

S- "The first order of business is the necromancer quest. The details, or lack thereof, in the target description would have lead to someone else's death and still not resolved the problem."

GG- "What did you find?"

S- "Apparently the necromancer had a daughter. She is also a necromancer, but she's scared of her own shadow, and her skeletons aren't quite mastercraft. She simply sat down and waited for me to cut her head off when I mentioned the quest. The quest is absolutely not targeting her."

GG- "So what are you getting at?"

S- "The long and short of it is that her father is sending troops of skeletons out of and near the edge of the dead woods, likely searching for her. She ran away from him, and if someone else took the quest, they probably would have killed her instead because there was no target description. She's lucky that I- er, we found her before someone else."

GG- "That would be horrible! I suppose we probably should start asking for more details on these kinds of things."

S- "Details are important."

A moment of silence fell between the two, and they stated of into the blackness of the guild. The guild girl then piped in,

"So where is this necromantress now exactly?"

"She's staying with the warrior girl. Apparently her mother has taken a liking to our little 'antagonist." The stranger replied. He stood up from the table and pushed in his chair. "I'm hunting for the girl's father in the morning. You should get some rest. You've likely got just as much work as I do tomorrow." The guild girl also stood up and pushed her chair.

"Yeah, you're probably right. So is this you saying you're accepting our offer?" she said. The stranger furrowed his brow and looked off into nothing, then back to the guild girl.

"Yes. I suppose it is." He said. He turned to leave. "Take care now." The stranger exited the guild and walked back home.

The stranger woke early the next morning and immediately dressed in his armor, grabbed his greatsword, and walked out the door. He followed the road until he got to the warrior girl's farmhouse. He approached the door and knocked. He immediately regretted this decision because he wasn't sure who was going to answer. Fortunately, it was his companion that came to the entrance. She looked like she'd just rolled out of bed. She rubbed her eyes as she opened the door.

"Oh, hey. What are you doing here? And this early?" she asked in a groggy tone.

"We have business to attend to. I'm going after the girl's father. Do you want to come?" he said bluntly. The warrior girl coughed and hacked into her arm. When she could breathe a bit better, she looked up at the stranger and said.

"I think I've come down with something. I want to go, but I'd just be slowing you down. Sorry."

"Don't worry. I wouldn't have gotten this far without you, so I can at least thank you for that." He said in reassurance. The girl smiled, then was forced back into a cough again. Once she finished, the stranger asked, "How is she doing?"

"She's doing fine. She passed out after dinner and I haven't heard a peep from her since." The warrior girl said.

"Given the way you sound, you should probably do the same." The stranger said.

"Good call. I think I will. And, good luck hunting."

"Of course. Get well soon." The stranger said. He turned and left the house and was on his way. The stranger kept on the road that had taken them to the deadwoods the day before. It was quiet this time, but he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched. The stranger looked all around as he walked, but couldn't seem to find anything out of place. This paranoia followed him until he reached the dead forest. The stranger broke from the path and started wandering somewhat aimlessly through the mists. He stopped and assessed his situation.

"You're out there somewhere. But just where exactly?" he thought. There came the snap of a twig. The stranger drew his sword from his back at lightning speed and took it in both hands, ready for battle. He slowly turned around, trying to center in on where the footsteps were coming from. Once the stranger narrowed it down, he readied his blade. A shadow started to form through the fog. Then it became a silhouette; a female silhouette.

"You'll never find him by yourself." The shadow said. It was the voice of the necromantress. The stranger eased up and the girl stepped through the fog into view. She had a bit more brazen expression than before and her hands were balled up into fists at her sides.

"I know you didn't want me to kill you, but sneaking up on me is a rather counterintuitive method of keeping it that way." The stranger said sarcastically. The necromantress didn't laugh, and mostly ignored his comment. "Why are you here anyway?" he asked.

"I heard what you were saying to that other girl, about my father." She said coldly. The stranger scratched his head.

"I don't have any other way of put-" he started.

"I want you to kill him. I want you to kill my father." The necromantress interjected. The stranger raised an eyebrow. "My father can't just keep getting away with the things he does. He needs to get what's coming to him."

"…How exactly did you find me?" the stranger asked

"There's something… about you. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can… feel you. Your presence." She said. The stranger rolled his eyes.

"Is it the fact that I'm a walking corpse?" he asked nonchalantly.

"Wh-What?" the necromantress asked, confused. The stranger took a breath.

"Not much point in hiding it from you. It's probably not that surprising for you either. Long story short, I've been cursed. I don't know who did it or how, but I seem to be unable to die and stay dead. If I do fall, I simply rise from the ashes some time later, usually more pissed off than anything else." He said.

"I see." The girl said. "I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with curses. I don't think I can-"

"Don't worry about it. It's not something I would burden you with." The stranger said. "Now, if we're both here for the same thing, you can lead the way. Be my guide, and I'll be your sword."

The two traversed through the mist, the stranger remaining quite close to the necromantress. She seemed to be meandering about, as though she was lost. The stranger, growing concerned, asked,

"Are you sure you know where you're going?"

"Yes. It's not a path I can ever forget." She answered, unwavering in the wandering path.

"If you were trying to get away from your father, why would you want to remember the way back?" the stranger asked, curiously.

"I needed to know… for when I was ready to confront him." The necromantress said. The two continued walking in silence for a few minutes, then the necromantress returned questioning.

"Tell me something, stranger. You seem very… open about your past." She said.

"When you've been around for over 1000 years like I have, you just stop caring about most things. How you look, what people think of you, even just living." The stranger said.

"But what about elves? They live for well over 2000 years."

"It's one thing to naturally live that long. But it's another thing entirely to be forced to live for more than ten times what your race is known-" the stranger stopped mid-sentence, seeing the necromantress come to a dead stop in front of him. He looked from her into the clearing before them. There stood a very old, and unusually large shack that was rather well-kempt. The girl was tense. She swallowed and said,

"We're here." She started to advance towards the shack, slowly. The stranger followed suit.

"How do you want to do this?" he asked. The necromantress stopped in front of the door. She turned to him with a pained expression and said,

"I need you to be my puppet." The stranger raised both eyebrows in the "You have got to be kidding me" manner.

"And how exactly do you plan on going about that? You can't control me." The stranger said, puzzled.

"I… I don't know. Put on an act, or something."

"I don't think that's going to work." The stranger said. The necromantress looked down. She took a deep breath, then pushed in the front door to the shack and entered. The stranger shrugged, drew his sword from his back and entered behind the girl.

The inside of the shack was strangely tidy, but unsurprisingly gloomy. Tables, vials, and test subjects, and candles burning unusual colors littered each room. The necromantress led the way through the rooms as though she knew her way still. She pushed her way through a large door and into a well lit room. The stranger looked around. It appeared to be some kind of study. There were books and body parts adorning many of the shelves.

"Festive." He muttered under his breath. The two heard heavy footsteps and the rattling of assembled bones. From the darkness of another doorway, there came a bellow.

"So you've returned. Why do you come? I offer no forgiveness." It said. The stranger couldn't see the girl's face, but her fists were clenched, and shaking.

"I came because… because you need to be stopped, father." She said. The voice laughed and said,

"You came to stop me? And all you brought was your, rather interesting friend?"

"You do horrible things to people. You only take and take and only care about yourself!" The necromantress shouted. Her father stepped into the light, revealing his stone white skin and long, slick, black hair. He wore a dingy black robe adorned with bone and claw trinkets and had a collar made of many crow feathers.

"Such insolence." He said. He pointed at the stranger and the necromantress. "Kill them both. I will have my daughter's head as a trophy alongside her mother." The girl's eyes widened and two heavily built skeletons stepped into the light. They advanced to the necromantress and reached out to grab her. She trembled, then the stranger grabbed her by her hood and pulled her back. He stepped forward and swung his blade upward into the skeletal hand, shattering it and sending bone shrapnel everywhere. The stranger dropped a knee into a spinning hack, taking out both of the same skeleton's legs.

"Oh? Perhaps mother would like to watch." The necromancer mocked. He held an arm out, and the necromantress saw a frail elven figure step out into view and take her father's hand; it was her mother. She looked remarkably untouched. Her pale skin was still smooth and her blonde hair was still silky. She wore a thin dress that was almost a veil more than anything else.

The stranger clashed blades with the bulky skeleton. He successfully disarmed the skeleton and shattered it's arm, but then it did something he wasn't expecting. With it's arm broken to a sharp point, it thrust forward and stabbed the stranger through the chest. In shock, he froze and started to choke. The skeleton grabbed the stranger by the neck with his free hand and began wrenching. Eventually the stranger's neck snapped , and he went limp. The skeleton dropped his lifeless body on the floor and started reassembling itself. The necromancer looked down at the stranger, then up at his daughter, who was slowly backing into a corner.

"Pathetic. You almost showed me some promise by coming back with that conviction, but you only brought one human. You brought your only friend to his death, if you can even call him that. You are weak, useless, and now you are going to die." They crept closer and closer, and the necromantress crouched down in fear. She looked at the stranger's body, and raised a hand, as if trying to resurrect him, but to no avail. She covered her face and cowered, expecting the end.

"Don't worry. You'll be joining your precious mother soon."


	9. CH9 A New Beginning

The necromantress cowered in the corner of her father's study, her father and his skeletal minions bearing down on her. The stranger lay dead on the floor behind the necromancer, her only hope extinguished like a weak flame.

"Don't worry. You'll be joining your precious mother soon." The necromancer said maliciously. Her life flashing before her eyes, the necromantress began to cry. Her father scoffed and laughed at her fear. He and his skeletons came within grabbing distance and looked down on her. The necromancer outstretched his arm and slowly descended upon his daughter. But then something stopped him. There was another arm grabbing his wrist, and not one he recognized.

The stranger jerked the necromancer's arm fully out, pulling him off balance. The stranger shoved his armored elbow into the necromancer's, bending it the wrong direction and breaking it. The necromancer howled in pain and leaned back. The stranger wrapped his armored arm around the necromancer's head, putting him in a steel laden headlock. The stranger grabbed one of the skeleton's arms and kicked the body, causing it to rip away. He smashed the bone of the ground, causing it to shatter into a sharp point, almost like a knife. He reached high and plunged the makeshift dagger into the necromancer's lower gut, the ripped it upward diagonally across his torso.

Blood poured profusely out of the necromancer's chest as he began to choke and struggle with the pain. The stranger dropped him on the floor and kicked him aside. He grabbed a large femur for the floor and lunged at the remaining skeleton. The stranger swung the femur in full force at the skeleton and shattered it's ribcage, dropping it's arms and skull on the floor. The stranger stomped the skull, shattering it and then smashing the other remaining skull with the leg bone.

The necromantress felt around the floor for a sharp bone. Once she found one, she uncovered her face, this time with a vengeful look in her eyes. She slowly rose to her feet, tears still falling like a waterfall. The stranger tossed his primitive weapon aside and looked at the standing corpse of the necromantress' mother. She simply idled there, unmoving and unflinching. He looked her over and found nothing outstanding. From the corner of his eye he saw the necromantress rising from her corner, seething hatred. She slowly stumbled over to her father's dying body. She looked down on him and he slowly started to reach towards her with his unbroken arm, almost as if he was asking for mercy. She slapped his hand out of the way and kneeled down. She got in his face.

"You are despicable. You are the lowest of the low. I hate you! You deserve worse than this!" she shouted. She raised her arm and slammed the bone shard down, shoving it through her father's eye and into his brain. He went limp at the first strike. The stranger watched the necromantress' mother fall the floor lifelessly. Then he looked back at the girl. She kept stabbing her father's cadaver and screaming and sobbing. The stranger thought about stopping her, but figured it was best to let her let it out. He picked his sword up from the floor and sheathed it on his back and went back to inspecting the girl's mother. The stranger looked back at the necromantress after a minute or two. Her father's face was no longer a face, and she could not lift her arm anymore. She was sobbing between deep breaths.

"Ahem." The stranger coughed, getting her attention. The necromantress looked over at him and her mother on the ground. "I think now might be the time for you to say goodbye to your mother, properly this time." He said. The necromantress scrambled to her feet and hobbled over to her mother's body and collapsed next to it. She began crying again and hugged the body tightly, sobbing into her neck.

"I'm so sorry I couldn't save you. I wasn't strong enough. I was weak when you needed me." She said.

The stranger turned away and left her to her mourning. He explored some of the other rooms in the shack. There were test subjects everywhere of various races and species. Some familiar to the stranger, some alien. He found a table with a dissected goblin. He looked the lobotomite over and found nothing that would make them increasingly tough. After some more time, the stranger heard footsteps. He looked to the doorway of his current room and found the necromantress standing there.

"I'm ready to leave." She said.

"What of your mother?" the stranger asked.

"We're going to burn her. And we're going to burn this place to the ground." She said. There came some hodgepodge skeletons walking out of the room behind her, carrying her mother's body, wrapped in some kind of shroud. They exited the building. The stranger went from room to room and knocked all the candles over, setting the immediate area on fire. He left out the shack after the necromantress. He stepped outside to find the skeletons digging a grave for the mother. They lowered her into the hole and then stepped back and fell apart into several incoherent piles. The stranger went and stood by the necromantress, as the shack started to be engulfed by multicolored flame. He reached into his bag and produced a small vial of a mysterious oil. He pulled the cork and poured the contents on the mother.

"What is that?" the necromantress asked.

"Annointing' oil. It burns very hot. Reduces most living tissue to ash in mere minutes. Got it from a place with a very strange metamorphosing outbreak. A lot of body burning involved." The stranger said. He approached the burning shack and pulled a piece of smoldering debris from it and brought it to the hole. He dropped it in and the mother ferociously ignited instantly. The two said nothing as the burning body died down and eventually there was nothing left of the mother but her cinders. The necromantress pulled what looked like a miniature vial from her necklace and kneeled down. She took a small scoop from the ashes and screwed the top back on. She held the vial in her palms and whispered,

"I'm never leaving you again."

There came the crash of thunder, and the pair looked to the sky. There came dark clouds overhead, followed by the rain.

"Well that's convenient. Won't even have to put out the big fire myself." The stranger said. The two said nothing as the rain began to pour. After a moment of silence, the stranger piped in,

"We should get moving." The necromantress nodded, and guided them out of the deadwoods. The rain hadn't let up by the time they'd reached the warrior girl's home. They approached the door and the stranger knocked. No one came at first, and the necromantress turned to the stranger.

"T-Thank you." She said, "For everything."

"I would say it was…. No… You're welcome." The stranger said. The door opened and there was the warrior girl and her mother, who brought both hands over her mouth.

"Oh my goodness! We've been worried sick about you!" she exclaimed. The stranger cast down a look of suspicion upon the necromantress.

"You snuck out?" he asked.

"I heard what you were planning. They never would have let me go willingly." She said. The warrior girl's mother fetched a blanket and came out to the porch and draped it over the necromantress' shoulders.

"Oh come in, come in! You must be freezing." The mother said as she ushered the girl inside. She looked back at the stranger. "Ah, you must be my daughter's partner." She said.

"That's right." He replied.

"Well you're welcome to come inside. You must be tired as well."

"I appreciate the offer but I do have some business to tend to."

"Oh, well, that's alright. You take care now."

"Always."

The mother smiled and re-entered her home, closing the door behind her and leaving the warrior girl alone with the stranger.

S- "You're looking better."

WG- "I feel a bit better now. How did it go?"

S- "Her father is dead, so she's at least got one less demon on her back."

WG- "That's a relief. Were you going to report completion?"

S- "Yes."

WG- "So tell me, how did you take him down?"

S- "She was actually the one to do him in. I was a bit more of a… distraction. There was lots of stabbing involved."

The girl cringed and held her hand up.

"Ooookay, that's probably all I needed to know." She said. "So is there nothing I can do to convince you to come inside?"

"Sadly no. I need to report this completion soon. I'm already soaked anyway, so it's not like the rain bothers me now." The stranger said.

"Oh well. Can't say I didn't try. Take care." The girl said as she waved the stranger off. He reciprocated the action as he stepped out from under the awning and into the rain.

Darkness was beginning to fall by the time the stranger reached the Adventurers' Guild, and the rain hadn't let up. The stranger entered the guild, and there were many faces cast upon him, as he was soaking wet. He looked around. Many of the adventurers appeared to be waiting out the rain. The guild seemed a bit more glum than usual. The partying volume one would be accustomed to was reduced to a dull roar, almost as if the rain put a damper on everyone's mood as well. The stranger shook his head to get the excess water off and went to the desk to speak with the guild girl. He approached her and said,

"I see not everyone is enjoying the weather like I am." The girl looked up from her paperwork at the stranger. She giggled at the sight of him still dripping wet.

"It certainly does not appear that way." She said. "Did you need something?"

"The necromancer is no more," The stranger said. "The actual necromancer this time."

"Great! I'll get this quest filed away and get you your reward." The girl picked up a sheet from the side of her and took it with her into the back room. The stranger turned and looked around the room. There were plenty of adventurers plastered to the windows, as though it would somehow make the rain stop. Others were sitting about twiddling their thumbs, some of them literally. There were two youngster adventurers eyeing the stranger from a distance. They were a boy and a girl, roughly 15 each. They looked like they wanted to ask the stranger something but were too nervous to do so, almost as though they were scared of him. There were footsteps behind him. He turned to see the guild girl walking back out with a bag of gold in her hands. She placed it on the counter in front of the stranger.

"And here you are." She said. The stranger reached out to grab it.

"Ah, thank you." He said, fitting the sack into his bag. The guild girl stood there awkwardly for a moment, drumming her fingers on the counter.

"Sooo, how did it go with the actual target?" she asked

"Irrelevant details aside, he was about exactly what you would expect." The stranger said.

"And what of his daughter?"

"Staying with the warrior girl still."

"Well, all's well and ends well I guess."

"I suppose so." The stranger said. He was about the turn away and leave, but then the guild girl leaned in and whispered,

"I have another case for you." The stranger stopped, and looked at her.

"What did you have in mind?" He asked.

"It's regarding the adventurers with the rather shiny armor. I'm sure you must have seen them around. They're both Ruby ranked, and they claim to be able to carry the newbies through easier quests, but it seems like more often than not, their employers don't make it back." The guild girl said.

"I think I see where this is going." The stranger said. "I'll be sure to start looking into it soon." The stranger started to leave again, but stopped himself. He looked at the guild girl and asked,

"Is there any particular way you want me to handle it?" She furrowed her brow and said,

"The guild would prefer if there wasn't any blood." The stranger nodded.

"Alright. That's all I needed to know." He turned and successfully managed to escape the desk. He made for the door, but the indecisive teenagers caught the corner of his eye. He stopped before the door and looked over at them. He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow as they froze. He approached the teenagers and they looked up at him.

"You look like you've been trying to ask me something." He said. The pair looked at each other, then the boy swallowed.

"We- we heard that you took down that chimera. By yourself right?" he asked.

"That's right. What of it?" the stranger replied. The girl piped in.

"That was a four-person quest. How did you do it alone?" she asked.

"As unoriginal as it is, knowledge is indeed half the battle… or more. The rest is simply training and applying it." The stranger said in confidence. "I've been around and seen more than enough for several lifetimes. It all becomes second nature after a while." The teenagers were looking less nervous and more eager at this point, like they suddenly had an avalanche of questions to let loose. Before they could, the stranger managed to end the conversation and get going before he was trapped until morning. The stranger exited the guild and off into the still-pouring night.

Morning came the next day with the stranger having slept in for once. He rolled out of bed and started to get dressed. He looked around for his shirt while donning his pants, then remembered he never retrieved it from the seamstress. He put on just his coat and boots and exited his cabin with a new goal in his mind. On the path back to town, the stranger spotted the warrior girl and the necromantress going the other way, as though they were coming back from the same. The warrior girl waved the stranger down and he crossed the road to meet them.

"I see you're out and about now." He said.

"Yeah. It's weird though. As soon as I got better, my mother started to feel sick. We ran into town to get some medicine for her." The girl said.

"Odd. Was there anything strange about her sickness? Contracted from you maybe?" the stranger asked.

"I thought about it. I did cough quite a bit, but for the most part I was pretty isolated from her."

"Hm. Well I hope she gets better soon." The stranger said. He looked to the necromantress. She seemed cleaner and more rested than the day before, but still just as downtrodden. It was almost as though she felt guilty about something. "Is something wrong?" She shook her head.

"So many… people. So many eyes boring into me. It's like they… want something." The necromantress said while avoiding eye contact. The stranger pondered over it for a moment, then shrugged.

"Well, I have some errands to run in town. I'd say you're welcome to come, but… well, you know. Your mother…" He said.

"Yeah. Maybe I'll see you around though." The warrior girl said.

"Maybe. Take care." The stranger said. The three parted and went on their ways. A minute after breaking, the necromantress came jogging back to the stranger. He turned to her.

"Back so soon?" he said.

"I… I want to come with you." She said.

"Any particular reason why?"

"You…. You make me feel safe." She said, lightly blushing. The stranger raised an eyebrow, not sure of what to make of her statement.

"Very well." He said, and he nodded her in his same direction towards town. The two made idle chatter for some time. Then the stranger asked,

"So, have you thought of joining the Adventurer's Guild?" the necromantress remained silent for a moment.

"I don't want to be an Adventurer." She said.

"Why's that?" the stranger asked, intrigued.

"There's just so much death. Not only the monsters, but people too. That and… I don't want to lose more people I care about." She said. The stranger shrugged.

"I suppose that's fair enough. I won't twist your arm over it." He said.

"I don't want to fight. I want…" the necromantress started, "I want to help people."

"Have you considered joining the church to become a healer?"

"I don't want to join the church. Religion never made much sense to me." The stranger looked away.

"I'm not going to touch on religion. Bad things seem to happen to me whenever it's involved." The two continued their banter until they strolled into town. The first place they stopped at was the seamstress. The two happened upon the elderly woman, knitting away in her rocking chair. She looked up when she saw the pair approach.

"Ah, heavens dear, you had me worried." She said.

"My apologies. I meant to come back yesterday, my last quest turned out to be somewhat more complicated than I was expecting." The stranger replied.

"Careful now, any longer and I might have sold your shirt." The seamstress said. She smiled and winked at the stranger as she stood up from her chair. She entered her store and retrieved the stranger's henna-colored shirt from behind the counter. She brought it out into the sun and held it up to him.

"Here we are, good as new." She said.

"Excellent." The stranger said with elation. He took his shirt from the seamstress and folded it up. He placed it into his bag, and then retrieved an adequate amount of gold from its pouch. He gave it to the seamstress, who graciously accepted.

"Thank you dear. Do be sure to come by if there's anything else you need." She said. Then she looked from the stranger to the necromantress. "And who might you be?" The necromantress went to open her mouth to speak, but no words formed. She became flustered and turned away in a mixture of fear and embarrassment. "Is something wrong, dear?" she asked.

"She's my new travelling companion. I happened across her during my last quest… She's not much of a talker." The stranger replied. The seamstress sat back down in her chair.

"Oh well. Not everyone is skilled at socializing." She said.

"So it is. Take care now." The stranger said. They waved at each other and the pair left the scene. The two made for the market. On the way, the stranger said,

"You froze up."

"I didn't know what to say." She replied. The stranger thought on it for a moment.

"Thinking on it deeper, I don't blame you." He said. "Don't worry. We'll get you by" They stepped into the mouth of the marketplace and looked around. "Now, while we're here, is there anything you want to do or get?" The necromantress looked up and down their side of the market with an indecisive expression.

"Tell you what. Let me know if something catches your eye." The stranger said. The two of them started perusing the booths and every so often the stranger would stop to buy supplies, as well as cooking ingredients and produce. Surprisingly, the necromantress was more curious than cowardly. She didn't speak with anyone, but she did stray from the stranger's side. Some time passed, and the stranger had finished his shopping. He looked around, but didn't see the necromantress anywhere. There was a chord strike in his mind like a parent who had lost their child. He started looking up and down the market aisles. Mercifully, it didn't take the stranger long to find his companion. He found her ogling at an ice cream stand near the end of the market plaza. He approached her and said,

"Find something you like?" She pointed at the cart and said,

"What… is that?" The stranger looked at the cart, then back at the girl.

"I don't know. You should go ask." he said. The necromantress looked up at him with a worried expression. He reached into his pocket and fished out two copper coins. He offered them to her and she hesitated to take them. She closed her eyes and took a breath, then took the coins. The necromantress began to approach the cart. The man who owned the cart noticed her.

"Well hello there." He said, jovially. The necromantress froze up for a moment, then she kept proceeding to the cart. She stopped in front of it, then nervously looked at the man; his round, smiley, mustache-laden face unphased.

"Wh-What is… this?" The necromantress asked shyly, stumbling over her words.

"Oh, this?" the man started. He scooped out a lob of the frozen treat and plopped it on a small platter. "They call it 'iced cream.' I don't know who thought it up, but everyone seems to love it." The necromantress half pointed at it and said,

"M-May I… have… one?"

"Well certainly!" the man said. He produced a small wooden spoon from the cart and dug it into the ice cream and offered it to the necromantress. She took it and then deposited the copper coins into his hand. "Thank you, and you have a wonderful day!" the man said, and then turned to greet someone else. The necromantress rushed back to the stranger, holding her frozen treat as if it was going to grant her the answer to the mystery of the universe.

"See? That wasn't so bad." The stranger said, jokingly. The necromantress slowly lifted the spoon to her mouth and wrapped her lips around the bowl. As soon as she tasted it, her eyes lit up like someone who'd found a new purpose in life. She looked up at the stranger with an ecstatic smile. The stranger chuckled.

"It's amazing!" the necromantress said as she put another spoonful into her mouth. She started eating it quicker, and then the stranger said,

"You might want to slow down with that…" the necromantress froze in place, indicating the stranger's warning was a bit late. The necromantress grunted, and then held her head.

"Ugghh. My head… What's happening… to me?" she said as she struggled with her words. She trembled in the pain. She started to breathe heavily. But after a few seconds, the pain began to subside. She stood up and continued to rub her head. "What was that?" she asked.

"That is what happens when you eat or drink cold things too quickly." The stranger said with a smirk. The necromantress looked up at him with an expression of betrayal. The stranger patted her on top of her head and said, "You'll be fine. Now tell me, is there anything else you would like to do today?" The necromantress pondered in thought for a moment. Then she said,

"I want to see the Adventurer's Guild."


End file.
